Moving day

        Since Feb I knew this day was coming. My mother is moving away. Today. The apartment walls are bare except for the few bits of art I've hung up to make it not look so empty and every where I look there are boxes. Numbered One  through 117 stacked up in every available space. White boxes numbered, boxes upon which is written in bold black text,  "live fish," numbered. Green cellophane wrapped paintings, Suitcases and ditty bags. Her green canvas tote with the dragon embroidered upon it. Her bedroom once so full and busy, stands dismantled and bare, everything put away in boxes, taped up standing ready to be moved. A life, a creative busy life, lived but momentarily in that room. Waiting now for another to live life in there. In this case me. 

        How long does it take to dismantle a life you've spent 23 years building? For my mother 4 months. That which I do not understand is why one with so much, such richness in her life would pack up and move away from all that she has built, the friendships she has garnered, the many groups she has belonged to, the one most important she has been with for 23 years. The weather cannot be the full driving factor. All she could tell me is that it was time. 

        It was time... for her, she is nervous, excited, a little anxious, a new vast adventure awaits. For me,  it is time to let go of the safety net she provided for me. The constant I had knowing she was there. Each morning when I woke up, each night before I went to bed. Her sounds, the talk radio, the deep resonance of her wind chimes, a little cough, a sneeze, the sound her phone makes when she text's on her phone, the clicking of her nails as she types on her computer, the sound of her sewing machine purring along as it embroidered for her. Those sounds that said, " hey you're not alone here." Funny as a youth I could not wait to get out from under my parents and now I want to hold on and say, " don't go."

        Apartments, while we call them home.. are really transitory. No mark you can make on them that says " this is permanently my home." They are simply a borrowed place. Their white walls and uninspired box shape, standing there saying,  " shallow roots only."