The Full Moon and Peonies, Saying Goodbye.

It's always been one of my little secrets. I ascribe human characteristics and emotions to inanimate objects. My perennials have always been personal "friends" welcomed back each Spring, mourned in their winter sleeps. I have a heart for "adopting" abandoned furniture and old dishes. I have offered to forego payment for design consulting services receiving instead, furnishings my clients were ready to "kick to the curb"...or a dear but partial set of old, crazed glaze Homer Laughlin dishes some young bride was so proud to display in 1898. I tell myself that I am providing them with a home...maybe even cherishing them more than any previous owner. Sick! I know! Don't start with the sermons, I've run them all through my head.

And so I am finding myself in an emotionally precarious place. Packing boxes that up to this moment are going...nowhere?...a storage facility (location also unknown)...a new hobby farm, forest retreat, suburban tract house. We've never been confronted with the offer to buy our furnishings before. It is sensible. They "make" this wonderful home we are leaving and may well NOT fit in our new home. I know the new owners to be extremely kind, already appreciating these (let's get real!) THINGS!

I am sure it's my imagination. NO! It's real. My peonies outdid themselves this month. They appear to be triple petalled and nary an ant on the counter below their immense bouquet. It's as though they are saying goodbye in the best way they can.

It's that time of "the lasts": a game I play whenever I move or we go on a big trip. This is the LAST shower I will take before leaving. This is the LAST time I will clean out these drawers. This is the LAST time I will watch the raccoons wrestling at my bird feeder at night. This is the LAST time I will bake a pie in this oh so well designed kitchen. This is the LAST time I will drag a pillow and blanket from the bedroom, open the windows to crisp breezes and fall asleep watching the full moon and bright stars from my dear, dear sunporch.

ANTIDOTES:
To be used to counteract the sometimes irresistible desire to look down, panic, and sink as I "walk on water" in faith:

* Accept any opportunities offered for coffee with friends and family.
It's so easy to say I have no time ( and I probably don't) but spending time with friends to vent and hear what's going on in their lives is a calming island of sanity in the unsettling maelstrom my life has become.

* Strive to NOT procrastinate, but rather methodically pack and dispose of STUFF in a timely fashion to head off any "marathon of panic" on June 29th.
Identify afew favorite things: a coffee mug, a favorite blanket,book, kitchen wares to take with me in the interim. The comfort of alittle "familiar".

*Focus on all the ways, some quite miraculous through which God has clearly affirmed this adventure of ours.

* Stop myself from the obsessive compulsive practice of going over the Multilistings online over and over again in hopes something will change. Make a physical list of criteria for our new home so that we are not susceptible to the constant temptation to find a HOUSE in order to have an address as quickly as possible ( and a home for all the boxes)...but fall short of fulfilling the perceived needs of this move.

* Kiss and hug on Grandbabies whenever I can and remind myself that they will NOT go in boxes but will be the best comfort in the coming months of exodus.

*MOST importantly. Make time alone with God to talk to Him and LISTEN for HIS guidance in this unsettling and unsettled time.

Eighteen more days of "Good Byes" to 1620 High Pointe Drive.