Tag Archives: Change

Germany

Into Boxes Again

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In some ways, it was the easiest move I’ve ever done.

Clothes packed into duffel bags and suitcases, books and crockery into boxes, decorative items gently wrapped before being placed into other boxes, frames taken off walls and stacked. Furniture loaded into the car or the van, padded with pillow and blankets. Three or four trips, one to a village a short ways away, and we were done.

And with every trip, things everywhere.

Furniture carefully moved into pre-measured locations, no space to spare. Empty a bag, fill a set of drawers, unzip the next bag, reorganize the drawers.

We spent hours combining two kitchens into one and formed piles: Things we use and love, thing to store for later use, things to donate, things that simply needed to go. Glad we had built a new set of shelves.

Mere days later, the bed stood slightly higher and more items found their place. Shortly thereafter, a new cabinet in the bathroom took care of a general sense of organized chaos.

A beloved photo printed on canvas. More pictures arranged and hung. Every spare surface filled with plants.

Forms filled out, phone calls made, appointments set, items slowly crossed off the bureaucratic to-do list. Agreements set with the landlord, a day spent painting the old apartment, items gradually sold to colleagues, to strangers, other items donated. I’ve always found it pretty easy to part with things.

A new, longer route to work. Depending on the weather, through the city or through the park. Based on the snow conditions, by bike or by bus. Alarm reset to save time for last-minute adjustments.

And then finding rhythm. Alarms ringing at different times, shower occupied morning and evening, discussion of which temperature to wash clothes. Who starts coffee and who makes the bed and are you coming straight home after work?

This move reminded me of my first move: Excitement, joy, family around to help, pizza when everything was done. I have a lot of experience with moves and it makes a difference, having people there to direct, to carry, to organize. It makes a difference, not doing it alone. But this move was yet different in its celebration, in the name labels that went up on the doorbell and mailbox.

This move was not just a change of location, be it part of town or city or country, but a change of circumstance, a change that I’d tried once before in a very different place and very different time. Aware of this, I had a moment shortly before where the world swayed under my feet and I needed time for it to steady itself; I needed time to steady myself.

In many ways, this was the easiest move I’d ever done. In another sense, the ease belies the work it took to get here.

And that’s how it is with transitions, I think. You don’t realize you’re there until you are. And then you step over the threshold.

Welcome home.

Weimar, Germany – January 2024
On My Mind

The Old House

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Whenever I dream of “home” I dream of the old house, specifically the kitchen, which was always my favourite room.

I remember the walls yellow and later orange-red, the cherry wood table and matching chairs stained with a blue accent that I knew was beautiful long before I was old enough to develop taste in furniture. I wonder if there are still math problems visible on the soft wood when the sun shines just right. I wonder if they can still be felt when you rub your finger along a seemingly smooth surface. It was always bright in the kitchen, even when it was dark outside, and I remember the upheaval of removing one pantry to build a desk and replacing the floor that children and toys had long treated too harshly.

The kitchen was the geographic centre of the old house, the first room you saw from the front door, and the first room you entered after bursting through the mudroom door in playclothes, smelling of sun and sweat or peeling off layers of snowpants and gloves. We did our homework at the kitchen table, ate dinner as a family, played board games, sat around to share the worst news and the best news. Almost every photo that we have from a birthday or holiday was taken in the kitchen. Every gathering with friends and extended family started and ended in the kitchen.

We always had a radio there and we listened to talk radio in the morning and music in the afternoon. Sometimes the bird was out on the island when we got home from school, and late in the evenings, the dog turned the island into a race track. The kitchen was the part of the house we lived in, and it’s the room I picture when I think about growing up.

I don’t remember much from my dream last night, but I was back in the old house, back in the old kitchen. I haven’t been inside since I moved to Malaysia nine years ago, shortly after which my parents sold the house and moved across town. I drove by once and soon I’ll drive by again to show it to someone who has only seen it through Street View on Google Maps. The photo there is of a house where I still lived, the car in the driveway not yet my brother’s. I wonder what it looks like now. I wonder what parts of it are best-loved now.

The kitchen is the room I always want to see when I visit a home for the first time. That’s the room I want to be in, the room where I feel most invited and most comfortable. Guests are shown first to other spaces, but kitchen parties are always the best parties. Time in someone’s kitchen is intimate, cozy, personal, and I think there’s some love there, too. It’s in the kitchen where we work alongside one another, where we see what’s not so tidy, where we take raw ingredients and make them into something magical.

It’s no surprise that the kitchen in my parents’ “new” house is the room I’ve spent the most time, the room I like best. It’s the first room you see from the side door, which is the only door they use, and it’s the room that contains the daily traces of people – reading materials left on the counter, coffee cups out ready for use, recipes tucked under the fruit bowl.

Last night I dreamed of the old house, which is always the case when I dream of “home”. My dream started and ended in the kitchen, and as always, it took me right back.

Vienna, Austria – January 2020
On My Mind

Night Thoughts by Day

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I think that to write is to come to an understanding.

I think that, I think that.

I think that, to know what is in one’s own mind, one must express.

Does a feeling need a name to be known?

Sleeping has been a challenge for a while now, but last night’s experience was particularly interesting. I was part of a conversation that included two people who I know, only one of whom was making any sense. I remained alert for quite some time after awakening and mulled over what had been said, but it trickled away from me as fast as I recognized the nonsense that was happening. And then I remained alert thinking about the strangeness of these people having a conversation, and I noticed a feeling of something lost.

I wonder what people mean when they claim to understand others.

I wonder what people mean when they claim to understand themselves.

Can we understand others without understanding the self?

And can we understand the self separately from understanding others?

I am far calmer lying awake at 3am than 11pm.

At 11pm, my eyes are active. It takes effort to put the book down, effort that my occasionally rational brain insists upon because it’s late. It’s 11pm, after all, and I haven’t been sleeping.

At 3am, my eyes are tired. My brain spins but my eyes are tired and at least I’ve slept until then, which is comforting. I need to stop the thoughts from dancing but at least my eyes are closed and that feels good.

At 3am, I go back to:

How am I feeling about the move?

Aside from feeling defeated by the question, I’m terrified.

I was a different person the last time I moved, and that was in a different lifetime.

How am I supposed to be feeling?

At 11pm, I am alert enough to avoid the subject.

During a very dark period of my life, I used to record my thoughts in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I used to turn on the songs that made me cry and play them over and over. I’d mouth the words until they became part of me and then I’d cry and be able to rest.

This is not that time.

But I am aware of how the patterns of behaviour that I developed out of necessity at that time have imprinted themselves on how I cope with challenges.

Adaptation is critical to human survival, and I wonder if I have become habituated to the sort of aimlessness I am experiencing now. This is not the right word, and far from an accurate characterization of my time and even my personal reflections of my time, but it is an accurate word to describe this feeling. It is a strange world when the reality and the feeling do not match.

Something is different this time, this move, this change. I cannot blame the pandemic, for blame is cause-effect, right-wrong, black-white. And the world is shades upon shades of gray and purple and green and blue and and and.

But I can acknowledge that coping throughout the pandemic has necessitated adaptation.

I wonder about our claims to significance.

Do we know at the time that a thought, a conversation, a shared glance, an observation will become signficant?

Or is significance developed through, over, across time? And then, is it the act or event itself or our memory and interpretation of it that becomes significant?

And does it matter?

I remember what it means to be excited and intellectually, I am. But my body does not have those feelings. The first inkling I had of what my body had lost was the moment when a friend reminded me, “This is an adventure.” As I write the word, I cannot keep from smiling.

Adventure.

My body knows what it is to have an adventure.

My mind knows what it is to live an adventure.

Does a feeling need a name to be known?

I think that, to know what is in one’s own mind, one must not be afraid of looking.