The In-between

So, how do you go about summing up the change from one life to another in a silly little blog post?

I would really like to know.

On June 28th, just a little over three weeks ago, I stood on Californian soil (or, you know, on the concrete with which it is covered) and looked at the spot on our living room floor where Eden took her first steps. I thought about bringing her home from the hospital to that apartment. About the corner where her bassinet used to stand by our bed. I remembered working on my master's degree at the table, typing papers and completing assignments in the early hours of many mornings. I remembered friends coming over to celebrate the completion of my degree and my first job as an official librarian. We decorated sugar cookies. And we were with the same friends in the same apartment at the same table when I carved my first pumpkin. I looked at the kitchen and recalled the night I chased Pudge around that room with a Kleenex box stuck on his head, carefully cradling a sleeping baby in one arm, knowing even then that it was one of those moments that would be very funny later. And I looked at the little bathroom that stood, tucked across the hall from our door and remembered sadness and fear and the grief that came with my first real loss. So many life-changing events and daily ordinariness all bundled up together in one little space.

Today I am sitting in another little apartment. It is new to me. I look out the window and see a beautiful tree, green leaves bobbing and swaying in the breeze. It is beautiful, and I'm thankful for it and glad to see it, glad to live next to it. But it is also new. The van that I drive Eden to and from the park in is new. The park is new. It has two huge play structures and swings and a bicycling/running path and a little lake with geese (!). But the grass turns swampy after storms and the humidity drives us indoors after too long. That weather - the thunderstorms and the humidity and the gorgeous clouds - is new to us. New enough, at any rate. The town is new. I've found Target and the grocery stores but nothing is where I expect it and a surprising number of brands are missing or unfamiliar. Peter's job is new and our church is new and the people are WONDERFUL, but they are still strangers. Certainly not enemies, but somehow, still, not quite friends. Not yet.

I daily see little to dislike and so much to love and yet I find myself wanting to shed all this "new" and instead pull on the old comfy familiarity of my old home and my friends-whom-I-can-call-friends and my routines and my life. If only I could figure out where it is in this new home with everything put away but still out of place.

A friend recently posted the following quote on her facebook account: "There is no growth without change, no change without loss, and no loss without pain."

I sit quietly and think about that.

Outside the leaves keeps dancing and the grass is so thick and green. It is new yet. But I am still thankful for it. So thankful for the new and the old, for the growth and the change, for having once found things that are good enough to hurt when you lose them and for knowing that there is still more goodness yet to be found, here, in this new place.