A Fresh Slate

I feel like so much has happened so quickly that I need some time to sit back and process it all. Before Eva was born, this in-between time of living with my inlaws (with all of our possessions underfoot or in their garage, until we can get into our new place on August 15th) would have ment an entire week of reflection and introspection, mixed with lazy reading time and entirely too much television.

Now that Eva is here, I can only afford to steal a moment or two during naptime. Quite frankly, it's much better this way. I'm entirely too drawn to overthinking and obsession, and given adequate preparation I'm sure I could find a way to spin even this lovely new beginning into a precariously hung spiderweb of hand-wringing proportions. It's a good thing Wilbur didn't have me building a web above his pen. I probably would have put in words like Disquiet and Trepidation, giving Charlotte's Web a whole new meaning. "Wouldn't touch the runt, Fern. That there is some pig Satan's pig!"

It can't be denied that I both love and fear a fresh start. As the library director said when she came by to send me off on my last day at work, "The only thing we can depend upon is change." I couldn't help but to agree with her, but as I'm the sort of person who likes to curl up with a book and a mug of tea and know what time the mail comes and what errands I need to run for the next few days, it can be hard to leap into a situation where none of that it possible for a while.

Still, it has its perks. For one thing, we left our hideous TV table on the curb, meaning I get to try and find something that doesn't scream "they found me on the curb to begin with" (which we did). I also get to leave behind a neighbor who smoked so much pot that I couldn't leave my clothes in the dryer five minutes past the end of the cycle. It was positively noxious in our basement 99% of the time. This will be the first time I haven't had to share a wall with someone else in eleven years, actually. Refreshing!

Most of all, I get to strike out with a new group of friends and acquaintances who will have always known me as a mother. I was in a transitional place with my friends in Columbus, having said goodsbye to my best friend there when she went to live in Pittsburgh, and having only just discovered a couple of moms who were as laid back and sarcastic as I like to think of myself as being. I tried on friendships with moms whose tastes ran more towards manicures and Vera Bradley than t-shirts and slightly outdated indie rock, but I just couldn't walk the walk.

To that end, I'm hoping I have the courage to show more of my true colors when meeting new people in our new town. I have the unsettling habit of trying to be what I think people want me to be, which is a trying way to live (and usually ends awkwardly). Better to sit back and embrace the fact that I hate when discussions never move past the level of window treatments and the amount of football some husbands watch. Besides, mine is more likely to annoy me by staying up all night to debate the quantity of multi-title crossovers, or the relative merits of Chris Claremont's run on the X-men vs. Grant Morrison's.

I mean, really, people. You can't beat the compact and concise storytelling during the John Byrne years. Or so I'm told... *rolls eyes*

Anyway. I'm a bit nervous to be fully embracing stay-at-home motherhood, and I can only hope that I'll eventually find people I felt as comfortable around as AmFam or ThatPatti or the other moms in our blogging pub night group. Friendships like that just kind of occur organically (or as the result of careful planning and stalking, if you believe some of their tactics *nudge, wink*). I'm not sure it would necessarily profit me to join up with another official "Moms Club" group again or not, although I may do it just to get out and about with Eva.

So much has happened, and so much has as of yet to occur. I'm sad to be leaving Columbus just as I began to find my "people," but I'm hopeful I can pull it off again a little further south. At any rate, I'm glad we'll be spending next week at the beach, unplugged from it all. I need a little R & R.

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And oh: In the end, it was surprisingly easy to leave our old place. I stood in Eva's empty nursery and cried a little bit, but I really and truly am so excited about this next stage that I couldn't get too worked up. There will be other nurseries and other rooms to rock babies in. And twelve straight hours of the most hot, tired, annoying labor humanly possible is enough to grind the nostalgia out of almost anybody. Leaving is actually a bit of a blur, and it maybe even feels a bit like we'll be going back there. I'll be glad when we get out of limbo and can begin the business of arranging our new home. It's so much easier to empty a box than it is to fill it up.