Sanguine

The sound of the wind blowing around outside is a comfort at a point in time in which I feel so transitional. Half of my house is boxed (or bagged,) the rooms are looking empty and lacking in their once comforting character, the world is in disarray and I'm feeling the weight of Friday's deadline like a punch in the gut. We're leaving.

Ro's been amazingly non-reactionary through this entire thing. She's not asking me why things are happening, she's not wondering about the boxes or where the furniture all disappeared to, she's not acting out or crying. In many ways this is a blessing. If she were only a little older she'd be asking about her friends, wondering what 'moving' means, demanding to know why her toys are being placed in boxes and we don't eat at the dinner table any more.

Instead it's me who carries the guilt and the sadness of leaving my daughter's whole world behind. I can comfort myself by reminding myself that I am her world, but the truth of the matter is that she has friends here, and she knows their names. She has activities she does every week, and she asks about them. She's only two and a half, but she has managed to establish an entire little life that revolves around things we can't take with us. Cassia. Holly. Pancakes. Chickens. Ian. "Morning."

She won't remember anything herself, it's up to me to remind her with stories and photos and visits as often as possible, but still I cannot help feeling that I'm destroying everything for her. It's my own sentimentality that is my downfall- no one else's. But I know I'm going to cry the first time she asks if we're going to Pancakes in the morning and I can't say aloud the words, "No. We're never going again."

In six days we get in the car, we start driving away from this house where I learned to be a wife and a mother, where I first brought my daughter home, this town where I've made many friends and finally learned the streets by heart, this life that I at long last figured out how to love... and we never come back.

The term "going home" no longer make sense.