I am taking a break today. I’ll do some laundry…but, at my leisure. For a while it looked like it might rain but, now the sun is shining and the waves are high enough for me to consider walking down and jumping in.

I have spent the last week packing up my apartment. It was just a year ago that I pulled up in a Penske truck and unloaded the packed remnants of my 44 years on this earth. During that time, I painted the living room, my bedroom and the kitchen…I put up curtains that I made and filled the old oak shelves with my significant collection of books. I did my best to make it a home for Megan and I…and CoCo. It was a good transition year for both of us, but, Megan misses her life in Goshen and I don’t blame her.

She arrived at our apartment on Saturday with her friend Shauna in a borrowed bus. When you are twenty…cash is much more of a priority than practicality. Bus…moving van… it’s all the same. Unfortunately, Megan didn’t inherit my obsession for organization, but she did inherit my penchant for four-letter-words—a s was evidenced when an un-taped, over-packed box exploded in the middle of the street. I really didn’t want to stop and help because it was so much fun just to watch.

As she backed this huge bus out of our narrow driveway without incident, I realized that she was not my little girl anymore and while I was sad that we weren’t going to be roommates, I was happy that she was happy…and so I didn’t cry when she left.

While I hid the difficulty of the moment on the outside, on the inside many emotions were brought to the surface…some I did not recognize until they came out in other ways. As I was walking out of Meijer one afternoon last week, I burst into tears without any warning. I barely made it to the car before I was overcome with body-racking sobs. I had no idea where it came from and I wondered if perhaps I was no longer going to be able to bend and this was how it felt when one begins to break.

I think that there were many things that I was trying to hold at bay. The idea of a truly empty nest, leaving a place that had come to feel like home, the idea of facing yet another change. Even packing Ali’s things seemed more difficult this time. The numbness had worn off and it struck me that with each move she is farther away from me. This will be the second place where she is not and moving yet again brings home the stark reality of time’s passing on without her.

So, now, I am tired…past the muscle, flesh and bone...down to the soul, tired. I told Craig that he’d better be sure about this because my next move was going to consist of one pine box with me in it.

After five years on a very bumpy ride, I am blessed to have been given such a soft place to land.  A day of rest; looking out over the waves and living my life beside someone who in my heart I have loved long before I knew him. There is joy in being able to look forward to the future and there is freedom in the knowledge that no matter what happens along the way…I have the strength and capacity to bend without breaking.