Moving

We’re moving. 

It was an idea my husband and I had for a while, and then it was a plan, and then, suddenly, it’s happening. We sold our house. 

Last weekend we put it on the market, and thought, maybe it will sell in a week, two weeks, a month. It took three days. So many people signed up to see it, we had to pack up the dog and flee the premises. We hid out in an Airbnb in German Village, which is a lovely neighborhood south of downtown Columbus. We’d visited a million times but never stayed there before. Why would we? It’s twelve minutes away from where we live.  

The Airbnb house was in an alley, and every time we stepped out, to walk the dog, to visit a café or poke around our favorite 32-room bookstore, we got turned around somehow and had to use the GPS on our phones to find our way back. The dog and I kept stumbling. The streets are made out of 150-year-old bricks and the sidewalk slabs are kicked up by tree roots. 

Also, it was non-stop with the phones pinging, the realtor giving us updates about our house showings, the potential buyer comments, a bidding war brewing. 

Is this really happening, we said to each other. Are we really doing this? 

We GPS-ed our way out to pick up dinner. We sat at the bar to order something to go. The restaurant was busy with kids dressed up for prom and tourists in town for some important sports thing we hadn’t realized was going on. 

Let’s get a glass of wine while we wait for our food, we said. Let’s get an appetizer to share. The bartender was funny. Why don’t you just admit you’re going to eat here, he said. 

We ate there and talked about the past. Other times we moved, the search for houses and new schools for the kids. The time I had to find an OBGYN, fast, because I was four days away from having a baby. The night we spent on the floor in sleeping bags because the moving van hadn’t arrived yet with our furniture. We talked about the present. The packing up and the saying goodbye to friends. 

The future, and what comes next?  

All weekend I was reading a book. The story was about two families who lived in the same town in Ohio for forty years. It’s about other things too. Family secrets and betrayals. One person saying I’m sorry, and the other person saying, It’s easy to say you’re sorry, but it doesn’t change anything. 

But I was still stuck on the part where the families went on living in the same place for forty years. I don’t know what that feels like. The longest I’ve gone without moving is twelve years. Sometimes it was not my choice. But just as often, it was my idea. What makes us want to stay? What makes us itch to go?  

We didn’t use our phones on the way back to the Airbnb. The truth is you can’t get lost in German Village, even with all the zigzagging alleyways, the blur of brick and stone. Eventually, you always end up at the park or the sausage restaurant, and from there you can find your way anywhere. 

The realtor called and we accepted an offer and drove the twelve minutes home, to the house that in a few weeks will no longer be ours. 

This is scary, we said to each other. 

This is an adventure.