Unbelievably, we are moving again.
We have been in our Missionary Ridge home for just four years, a short amount of time by investment standards. But it has felt much longer.
Maybe it’s because we lost all three of our elderly dogs here, and time doesn’t fly when you aren’t having fun.
Or maybe it’s because time elongates when you’re engaged in novel things like adjusting from living on 10 acres in the country to living on an acre in the city. If the latter’s the case, then time will positively stand still next year when we move to a subdivision – an experience that will be, for me, novelty times infinity.
I have always loved the promise of a new home. Because of this, I moved around constantly from age 20 to 35. I have lived, in no particular order, in a house without heat, one that burned, one that was mobile and one on stilts. Twice I’ve lived in the loft of a barn, and once on the fringes of a cornfield. I have lived over the streets of New York and under the streets of Boston. I have lived on farms, in the woods, in the suburbs and, for part of one summer, in the back of a truck.
I remember each of my dwellings with that special affection we reserve for relationships that flared bright then died. With each new dwelling came the welcome, steady heartbeat of imminent completion: the belief that my house and I would be, in sickness and in health, forever together.
We never were.
No one is more surprised than I am to find myself moving to a subdivision. I’ve been historically opposed to neighbors in every form, most notably those under three feet tall, whose high, joyful voices at play make me want to crawl inside a soundproof room and sleep for more hours than humanly possible. Maybe this is because my own childhood was devoid of joyful noise, or maybe it’s because I have a special adversity to what is considered by most to be delightful. Either way, I’m a little worried.
I mentioned my adversity to joyful youthful noise, mostly jokingly, to our Realtor at the subdivision. And I suggested, mostly jokingly, that she keep this in mind when she is selling the lots on either side of ours. This prompted my husband to take me aside and explain that Realtors deal primarily in housing and are not in the business of sterilizing families to suit neighboring families.
I rolled my eyes. “She doesn’t have to sterilize them,” I said. “Unless she wants to.”
Noise worries aside, there are other things that scare me about our impending move. But I’ve realized they’re the same things that scare me about doing pretty much anything: Fear of the unknown.
The other night, as I drove home from a play in an ark-worthy rainstorm, I mused on the fact that I was, for much of the drive, flying blind. I knew where the road was, in general, but could not see where one lane ended and another began. And so I did what I always do when I can’t see to drive: I made a pact with the car ahead of me to do whatever it did. When it turned in a direction I didn’t want to go, I made a pact with the next car. And so on until I got home.
It occurred to me on that trip how much of our lives we spend doing exactly this: driving without knowing exactly where we are going, putting our faith in first one guidepost, then another, then another. And even if we know where we’re headed, we don’t always end up where we expect.
The great test of life, it seems to me, is coming to some level of acceptance about this lack of control over our destiny. Not coming to some level of acceptance looks like so much reliance on magical thinking, false idols, superstition and head-in-the sand posturing.
Obviously, I made it home from the play the other night. And I will likely make it “home” to my new subdivision next year when our house is built. But what exactly that will mean – how exactly our lives will play out there – I cannot know. So I’m buckling my seatbelt. Only time – that shape-shifting vehicle of journeys novel and not – will tell.
Dana Shavin’s memoir, “The Body Tourist,” is available locally at Star Line Books and online. Contact her at dana@danashavin.com.