The Goodbyes have started; a dinner with colleagues, a final staff meeting, food and conversation with friends before the drive away. Soon to come: a final open house, turning in keys after a final walk-through. Packed boxes tucked away in corners and a spare bedroom are changing the landscape of the house. One month out, this move isn’t a once-for-all event. It’s a gradual receding of the activities, things, and people that have marked our daily life these past three years. We are still here, but something of us is receding bit by bit, drawing us out from this particular place.
It feels like an ebbtide, this pull of gravity. Unlike a true one, we won’t be brought back to this place on the next incoming tide. We will emerge in another place – just as it brought us to this new place not so long ago.
oh my–all the packing and sorting–reminds me of those lines in David Whyte’s “Finesterre,”–“To empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that; to promise what you needed to promise all along, and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here, right at the water’s edge….” Very, very liminal poem–and the title, Land’s End. Seems where you are…. Where are you and Dave headed next? Blessings!
I’ll take all the packing blessings I can get – thanks, David. We will be back in Massachusetts when we leave Vermont – trading the bears and mountains in for beaches and seagulls….peace, Johnna