Tuckered

My wife + me on Saturday eve after packing, loading, driving, unloading.
(photo by Susan Wolfe)

It's done!

We've moved most of the contents of our home to Massachusetts, and holy cannoli, am I tired. Also beyond grateful, for all the help from amazing friends and family with loading + unloading that 16-foot sucker (i.e., "truck")… cooking us food and making our new house feel like a home — complete with ukulele serenading.

After returning the truck, we relinquished a boatload of forms to the local school and — voilà! The girl is registered to start learning, Massachusetts-style, in less than three weeks. Then I was lucky enough to meet with a fabulous entertainment attorney in town, and we hope to do some work together. Exciting!

And today, I'm crying over things like… air. The way the light falls on the sidewalk. Beautiful people telling the full-stop truth. You know. Little-big things. I don't know if it's the moving itself (which some people say is one of the Top Difficult Life Events) or the back-and-forth between two very different environs, or what. But man, I feel raw. My body hurts, my head is full of too many thoughts, and my heart is feeling all of what it will right in the thick of this goodbye process.  

Five more days of work after today, and then we go, for good.  I can see the bottoms of all my desk drawers, which hasn't happened since I first moved into this office 10+ years ago. Which makes my heart beat faster.

HappyExcitedTiredSorePanickedScaredReadyExhilaratedSoon

More dispatches from the train

Brassaï: from his exhibition "For the Love of Paris”

Yesterday, after a day spent packing up most of my office:

I'm on a train easing slowly through the bowels of Penn Station. Overhead, lights cast a brilliant sheen on metal surfaces of stationary train cars and snaking tracks. My brain, in hardcore farewell mode, filters this scene as unbelievably gorgeous, like Paris (I imagine) in the rain.

The way the early-evening light filters through I-beams, as we pause in the spot where spiky city skyline emerges before we plunge into the tunnel, breaks my heart open.

I feel the bulk of a beautifully worn radio tuner at my feet, third in a series of heavy audio pieces being carefully lugged home each evening I can manage to find a ride home from the station.

I find these once commonplace moments to be startlingly heartbreaking. My heart opens wide to catch these last few drops on this side of my life.

I feel a bit ridiculous but also unbelievably lucky.  How often do we get to fully inhabit these moments of our lives? Saying goodbye to the here and now is one of the best ways to appreciate it, no?

* * * * *

And now, at home the day before we load up a 16-foot truck, I pack some more! Soon I'll be crying over some expired MetroCards, forgotten in the back of my desk.