After fifteen years in the same place, we recently sold our home and moved. It's both daunting and exciting (and all-consuming work), starting over fresh in a new house. But at the same time, it feels as if we've left a piece of ourselves behind in the old abode. All that history. All the good times and memories. And of course, all the books written in my old office. Every book I've published (plus the two that will be out in October) was written there.
Don't get me started on how many moving truck-loads-full it took to simply move across town. It's embarrassing to see how much stuff you can accumulate over the course of fifteen years. I suppose that's why people have moving sales. <g>
Even so, as we were deep in the process, it dawned on me that moving was sort of like a review of the past fifteen years. A celebration. An assessment. And a much needed Spring/Summer cleaning. It also made me wonder what it would be like to live in the same place all your life -- to have an ancestral home. With that in mind, I'm posting this beautiful painting by Renoir -- House in Collett at Cagnes. Not only is it yellow like our old place, it has that homey, much-loved look of a house that love has made a home.
I'm not exactly homesick for the yellow house -- more like wistful and I'm way too jazzed as we embark on this new path. But as we settle into the new place -- as we paint and set out flowers, taking the first steps toward making this house our home, I have to remind myself that home doesn't happen over night. It happens one day at a time. One memory at a time. Until the newness surrenders to the patina of home.
Or is home simply a state of mind? What do you think? Do you like to move? If so, why and how do you make new places home?
