Moving

The very thought of packing up a house to move sends chills into any sane person. The thought of moving 5000 miles to a new continent where you know hardly anyone labels you insane.

In 2013, my family and I had the opportunity to relocate to California, the beaches of San Diego doing a convincing job of selling the sunshine life to us all. That was to be the end result. 

The interim however involved the packing up of a 6-bedroom house and quickly we discovered we were not just ‘moving house’. We were ‘moving lives’. As each room opened its heavy oak door to welcome us into its individual world, we found ourselves dismantling 6 years of a home and a life that would now be forever redundant. Inside every cupboard and creaking drawer lay a hidden memory; some ready to be discarded; some to be shared with owners new whilst others were held in kid gloves, wrapped delicately in tissue paper and treasured as intrinsic members of our family, journeying with us, wherever next.

This shedding and retaining helps focus your mind on our materialistic world. So much is just stuff taking up space, dust collectors sitting silently, forlornly forgotten at the back of a cupboard. When you start to envisage your stuff on its five thousand mile journey, ensconced in a large tin box bobbing across the sea, traversing the Isthmus of Panama, you question the value of this stuff. Does it deserve this epic journey? What meaningful purpose will it hold in our new life? How empty would my life be without this stuff’? These questions significantly help to lighten the load.

It affected our family differently. My 9 year old son carefully deconstructed dozens of painstakingly built Lego models, each collected into a Ziploc bag identified by a photo ready for it to be reconstructed in his new world. I never once believed he would rebuild any of them as new creations would beckon but for now, he needed the security that all would be the same.

I truly had no idea what my husband felt. He was in a robotic stupor. His relentless work pace was unabated despite the upheaval. A four hour daily London commute combined with managing both East and West coast time zones meant his own move was consigned to the small hours, on autopilot as he de-cluttered his British life silently alone through the long nights. Being pulled back to San Diego on business three weeks before the Big Move was the last straw. That Californian sunshine had better deliver.

For me, the shedding of the baby items was particularly poignant. This beautiful house, where our second son had been born, was dedicated to his early life. Stair gates had graffiti-ed the walls, as had his early meals; the aroma of baby permeated the house, daily routines were created around his unrelenting schedule. As the final physical items of infant life were re-housed, sold or lovingly gifted to expectant mothers eagerly anticipating their own new life, a realization takes place - your family is complete. It’s finite.

It’s finite like our move. We knew there would realistically be no returning to our happy life here in the UK. No matter when we came home, it would never be the same. Life will have moved on, we will have changed, our friends will have forged new relationships as we took ours elsewhere. They were to become our back-story, used to illustrate ourselves in our new world.

However, it was not all sadness and regret. The adventure that lay ahead was the pull that took us on this journey in the first place. This was to be our end result.