The happy couple that is welcoming their first child. The new employee starting her first day on the job. The person who sits in a quiet room surrounded by boxes in a strange town. The woman sitting at a hard wooden table signing divorce papers. What do all these people have in common? They are going through a change.
Changes are stressful even when they are good. Changes happen in relationships, jobs, homes and personal situations. Change is just a part of life but it doesn’t mean that it is easy.
I am experiencing a happy change. I am in the process of a move. But as I have found out, packing up years of your life is never an easy process. I am not moving to a new town or a different state. But the steps I am going through are time consuming and at times, difficult. As happy as I am to be moving into a home that better fits our family, it is an emotional time.
As I pack up my son’s clothes, I come across a baby sleeper that was pushed to the back of the drawer. I smile as I remember my infant son sleeping in that very outfit in his crib that he has long outgrown. I raise the clothing to my face and take a deep inhale of the soft fabric. It still smells like him, sweet and powdery. I glance at the pile of outgrown toys and clothes that are labeled “donations” and slowly fold the sleeper and tuck it away in the box of things that I am packing for the new house. What am I keeping it for? I don’t know but what I do know is that I am not ready to give it up.
As I sit on the floor of my son’s room, I look up at the walls my husband carefully painted and I stenciled with sports balls before our son was even born. I can still remember how stiff my arms felt as I awkwardly detailed footballs, baseballs and soccer balls, working around the bulge of my growing belly. Our baby boy’s room in our home. It was worth every minute of painting.
This is how the moving and packing has been for me the majority of the time. With each box that I carry down the hallway, I can visualize my babies taking their first steps down that same hall. I can remember entertaining our friends on our back patio and birthday parties with our children. Our family has shared laughter and stories in the dining room over meals. I was a newlywed here. I became a mother in this house. We made this house a home. The emotional attachment that I have to this home overwhelms me.
Of course we will make new memories in our new house. I love the new house but it won’t keep me from missing the old one.
Life is filled with changes. Things have to change or they have to end. Change is good.