Monday, July 24, 2006

Goodbye, house. Goodbye, yard. We're one month gone next Friday. I'll only confess this: while one should never get too attached to a piece of property, I stood in the yard and shed a tear on the evening of June 28th. Feeling the melancholy of last looks. For the kids, this is an adventure. A long ride in the car. It has meant seeing their friends and our friends, cousins and family in an extended vacation. We started in Hebron, New Hampshire. Groton, actually. The cabin. It rained one of the nights, but was beautiful the other. We vacationed as if it were a cabin and not a place to work, spending one day on the beach and another. Eating out. The cabin was almost finished. We shed a tear or two as we parted from there and onward to Brunswick, Maine where we caught up with other friends and their new baby and gave ourselves a needed break in a hotel - shower, television, swimming pool... We took the time to think, because moving requires thinking. Living on the road for four weeks requires thinking - and lots of packing. From Brunswick we went north to Brewer. Another sister and her family and their boat to watch fireworks over the Penobscot River. North again to the Farm. Clean air, crisp nights. The kids catch their breath and swim. I remember why I love this place, Mustard Seed Farm. North again to P. Russell's camp outside of beautiful Millinockett, Maine. Then south to Lamoine State Park. Our campsite. A day to visit Acadia National Park and swim in the arctic current of the Gulf of Maine. The first night in Lamoine it rained like the great flood, but then it dried off. We returned to the Farm and from there headed to Family Camp 2006. Six nights and seven days in our cabins by the lake. Two shifts of siblings and others and lots of cousins to play with for hours. Maxim made friends with Sam, a six year old visiting the camp with her grandparents. Noah played hard with his cousins. Our lives intersected again. All of us, moving together in rhythm for a few precious hours; our once-a-year check-in. We miss our backyard. We miss our house. I drove by yesterday and was overjoyed to see nothing had been changed yet. Sunflowers grew where we left them, and cosmos and the red oak. Our landscape of plants lives on without us. And our home, we have learned, is among those who we love. And our back yard to come waits with anticipation.
Until St. Pete...