Holding Pattern

If there's one thing I can't abide, it's waiting. I hated it when I was young and I still hate it. Waiting means you can't control the outcome. Waiting means someone else has power. Waiting means anything can happen in the meantime. Anticipating that I would be in a new home in two days, I did the smart thing, I packed. Now I can sleep on the couch surrounded by boxes, or I can sleep in the bed surrounded by boxes. The choice is irrelevant. Boxes can wreck a good night's sleep. You feel them looming. Above is a view from my bed.

It's strange to think that years from now I may look back at these photos and think, I lived there. That was my home. That was my bed. That was where my family (of two) resided, where we fed our friends, where we watched tv, where we unpacked our groceries, where we slept one night out on the back deck to wake up in front of the water... I wonder how that will make me feel. Sad? Sadder than I am now? Well, that's not possible. Will it feel like a dream, like a time that never happened? Will it feel like just one of the many lives I've lived in this lifetime?

I wrote a poem once about a locket my children gave me. They had put photos of themselves in it from when they were young. I opened the locket while standing at the kitchen sink and I thought, what happened to these sweet little children who I loved so much? Where did they disappear to? I miss them so much. Those same children became teenagers who bought me the locket, but they felt so different. I still felt passionately about them but they had become different people. They were living a different life and so was I.

I figure this will be much the same. Where did that life go? How did it slip through my fingers? I know for sure that I will deeply miss the cabinet beyond the boxes in this bedroom photo. Nicest cabinet I ever owned.