For Christmas this year, I was able to head back to New Home (many thanks for your patience in my responses to comments). It was good, but it was definitely not the visit I had anticipated having.
Christmas itself was delightful and leisurely as they have come to be. We were up far earlier than Nighean Bhan and Nighean Dhonn (not sure when that reversal of rising happened, but it is real) and unpacked our stockings - in a first, Old St. Nick was helped by each family member choosing another family member for a stocking, which resulted in some nice surprises. Breakfast was our traditional monkey bread (biscuit dough covered in brown sugar and baked) and quiche, followed by the opening of gifts and a conversation with Nighean Gheal in South Korea - this year's gifts included long sleeved shirts (for New Home 2.0), books (what a surprise), and various and sundry small surprises (including a portable CD/DVD drive for my computer so I can watch movies and play games). The afternoon passed with off and on Christmas special viewing, reading, and general lackadaisical behavior.
But the real surprise - when it hit me, sometime on Christmas Day - was that this was really going to be my last visit "home".
Oh, not home in the sense I am never going back (I have a graduation to attend in May). But "home" in the sense that the next time I go back, it will not be the place that I and The Ravishing Mrs. TB will dwell.
Part of that was hinted at through the week: all the empty space in the house where our furniture now in New Home 2.0 used to be, things missing there that I used to use regularly, the pickup of the car by the third party (leaving me effectively car-less, a true visitor relying on others for transport). Part of it was looking around and seeing things that I had worked on removed: The garden area has been stripped of its fence and posts with nothing growing there, the garage half empty with a very few things that I needed to decide on, my closet space already beginning to occupied by Nighean Bhan's clothes once we move out.
On one hand, it prompted me to take care of some outstanding issues that had really waited for months or years for me to resolve: packing up seeds and grain into Mylar pouches with oxygen reducers to transport, identifying the few things in the garage that I needed to make sure were either retained or thrown away, finding all the work that will need to be done on the house after we leave, work that I had kind of "let go" and not attended to during my time there.
On other hand, it left me with a sense of finality.
Given my experiences to date, it is likely unwise of me to proclaim we might never live there again: Nighean Bhan may very well make her home there and the attraction of potential grandchildren may be too much to resist for The Ravishing Mrs. TB (well, to be fair, maybe for me as well). At the same time, the paucity of visits being reduced to once every six months or so left no other conclusion that the reality that in a real sense, I was no longer a resident. I was a visitor.
I am not sure why this discovery surprised me, but it did. The math has all been there - I had not been back since July of this year to move the rabbits and would not be back again until May of next year. But somehow, despite all of that, I still somehow held in my soul that this was still in some way my "home". It was not, really: life had moved on and somehow I had not moved with it.
Perhaps it was because the only other experience I have had is Old Home, which is where I grew up and so somehow never felt like I had left. But that is not really true of New Home: it was a place I lived and had a lot of good experiences in but where I do not live anymore.
What a surprise to go back and find out that the uprooting you have felt over the last 9 months really was that: an uprooting, not just a change in scenery.
I went through something very similar a couple years ago when my father sold the farmhouse and surrounding buildings. I used to go there weekly to attend to the garden and other things requiring my attention. The last time I went was to get a load of straw early last summer to bring back to my new garden and I felt like a trespasser into someone else's life. I have one more load of straw remaining and then, like it or not, I will be going back by invitation only. I will most likely visit only in my memories.
ReplyDeleteEd, I can empathize. I had the same sensation, which I suspect will become even more pronounced. Indeed, I find myself in a position at the moment where nowhere is truly "home".
DeleteAh.......finality became Finality TB and good for you in recognizing it despite all the emotions of the Holiday season, the eggnog and the feasting......... :)
ReplyDelete"finality became Finality". Excellent turn of phrase Nylon12, and very descriptive of the sensation.
DeleteIt was very odd when it hit me as a thought. Then as I rolled it around in my head, I realized how true it was.
I can't say I can fully relate, as all of my experiences with moving have been at others' behest or from one apartment to the next. So, leaving such a bevy of Things Undone has never been an option. No, no, we always had little else than a series of One Last Thing: One Last check of the crannies and corners, One Last chat with friends and neighbors, One Last visit to the doctor on our street because my brother didn't know there was a broken bottle in the final bag of garbage he was taking out. Little, passing things.
ReplyDeletePerhaps having a tether, however tenuous, to a place one once resided seems to stave off or diminish the impact of departing. Of course, all actions equal and opposite, that leaves one with no great conclusion to the escapade. No song and grandeur, just finality without fanfare; a mental footnote that, yes, It's Done™.
Such is the power of unfinished business, it seems.
P_P, this has been a rather long, drawn out affairs (similar to packing up for The Ranch, interestingly enough). It is interesting to me because I had not thought in terms of that until now, seeing as we will still own the house (that tether of which you speak). But it seems unlikely that we would be back for awhile at least, forever at worst.
Delete"Finality without fanfare". A very apt description.
I hear you. The old place I lived in for 12 years feels like a foreign country now. I don't even think about it much anymore. The key is to have a poop-fest move. That way you don't even want to look back. So happy to be done over there...
ReplyDeleteSTxAR - Perhaps what delayed this for me was the reality that 95% of my "stuff" is here and so the reality of it being not there has not really hit me until now. And the less and less of one's things that are there and the less one goes back, the less it becomes real.
DeleteI suspect the visit in May, when we are truly "out", will be even more disorienting.
I think it's really nice that Christmas worked out the way it did for you. You've been through so many huge changes this year, so there's been a head spinning transition, but now there can be closure to that chapter of your life.
ReplyDeleteLeigh, it is really nice - and completely unexpected. I think if I had gone in with a greater sense of foreboding and the realization that "this was the end", it would have been a much more somber event. The realization did not hit me until the day after.
DeleteAlthough there are still a few loose ends to tie up, within two weeks The Ravishing Mrs. TB will be here relatively permanently, barring at least one trip back to finish relocating her things into another room and one trip back to get her automobile.
Beginnings and endings. They never ... uh, end ... do they?
ReplyDeleteThey do not Bob, although I will say this one seems a bit more dramatic than some of them have been.
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