New Digs

It struck me the other day that the house I just moved out of was the longest I had ever lived in one residence. This might be evident to The Children who find it amusing that I still call 28th Street “my” house. But to be fair, I still call my childhood home “my” house, so maybe it’s just that I have a harder time letting go than most. (Or have control issues.)

But the truth is…I know a part of me will always live on 28th Street, just as I know each place I’ve lived will always remain inside me; each home living and breathing as if I am still existing in it’s walls. 

I relish in the yearly long, slow drive down the old Iowa street and I’ll be damned if I can’t see my 8 year old self rollerskating up and down the cracked sidewalks. If I can’t envision the night games that dominated summer months. If I can’t smell the pile of crunchy, freshly fallen leaves, raked up only so we could jump into them. If I can’t feel a chill in the air at the thought of those dark, early, winter evenings.

I visit my family in Texas and I remember the early days of living in a new place, so far away from everything we knew at just 14 years old. I see my mom painting those wretched blue walls white; I see myself mowing that huge lawn then jumping into the pool fully clothed in the 100 degree heat. I see us figuring out how to live, to breath in our new home. 

Each chance I get to pound the pavement in my beloved New York City, I walk down that long stretch of 79th, from Broadway to Columbus and remember the jolt my 18 year old self felt each time I realized I lived there. I remember coming home as the sun came up, a smile on my lips, sleep on my eyelids, knowing that I was exactly where I wanted to be doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. The thrill of young adulthood is an impossible high to catch once it’s gone. 

And then there is California. It was meant to be a temporary stop, that thrill of young adulthood taking a detour to the sunshine. But 17 years and a whole lot of life later….I guess this is where I live now. 

And now I got me some New Digs once again.

And having come so recently from such a long stretch in one place…I have to admit it’s been a little challenging to figure out how to just…live in these New Digs. Every routine, each neighbor, every car, each room…it’s all changed. The sounds are different, the traffic is different, the dogs are different. As I sit here and type these words, the melody of the high school marching band practicing just down the street is wafting through the air, reverberating throughout the neighborhood as a gentle reminder that summer is almost at an end. The sun is setting and the rehearsal is coming to a close and I wonder how it will be to live here on Friday night football games and each afternoon as the bell rings and teenagers take over the streets, mindlessly messing around on their precious mobiles. I wonder how life will look once the haze of summer has lifted and it settles into the routine that a school year brings.

It is for this thirst of routine that I am looking forward to the close of summer. I don’t want it to rush by; I like our lazy mornings and my kids are having great adventures alongside lazy afternoons, but I feel as though I’ve been lost amongst the drifting. I feel as though I haven’t had the chance to connect with these New Digs; to sit alone and figure out how it breathes, how it lives. We are still strangers figuring one another out. And these chaotic, boring, fun, lazy, monotonous months of summer have prolonged me from not feeling like a guest in my own home. 

Home is where the heart is, they say. These people who say stuff seem to be right a lot of the time. Because nothing makes me feel more at home than Two Children fighting over my personal space on the sofa while we all yell at one another about what we want to watch. So perhaps it still feels foreign; perhaps I am still pondering what goes where and how it fits and who does what and how do I just….be still in these New Digs….but I know that one day down the road, I will pass by these New Digs and close my eyes and feel all the life that was lived inside it. 

But for now…I just gotta get living in it.