FORGETTING WHERE I LIVE

FORGETTING WHERE I LIVE

Here is a personal reading of my place in this hemisphere today. Only three more sleeps in our home. Technically it is still ours but it doesn’t feel that way. Yesterday Christine and I signed all the required documentation for the legal transfer of this family home of twenty years as well as for the purchase of the new accommodation we will call ours soon enough. Nothing will be the same, and that is both beneficial and disquieting. It is intentionally beneficial as a matter of choice to make the investment in this property work for us, to unload the responsibility and work of maintenance and to gain a measure of freedom to lock up and to travel. It is involuntarily disquieting as a natural outcome of leaving a quarter acre lot with a spacious building that has been home to children through university and for their spouses and children as years sped past. It has appealed emotionally to us for its attractiveness outside and inside and for the inviting interior design that permitted us to host large gatherings of people for numerous occasions. Perhaps the disquiet factor is dominant over benefit presently because of what this change in our lives signifies. Twenty-one years ago we moved from Ontario to a new province, a new job, a new life opportunity and new dreams. We purchased a dream home and filled it with the enduring quality furniture of our choice. Today, all of that furniture has either been sold or given away and what remains is in boxes that will be carried into either our new place or our storage locker. We will acquire new furniture of course but we will never again have the same attachment to it as we had earlier. Life has changed. We have changed. This move, while it is wise, is necessitated by our years, almost seven decades of them. We are following an obligatory human life-cycle curve. Christine and I think about this. Yet, we are choosing to regard the adjustments and the move itself as a grand prospect. We will be opportunistic. On Christine’s bucket list is short-term mission service and we are considering Mozambique among other options. We will do what we can to be healthy. I have dropped 28 lbs. and I am going for 51 by July. I walk or run several miles each day. We will continue to invest love and time into our five grandchildren. We will spend time enjoying one another, savouring refined cuisine in our own kitchen or with friends, reading and writing and playing or listening to fine music, or sun-soaking at the beach, painting and loving life. Since God our creator and keeper has been integral throughout our lives, He is coming with us into our new home and there is profound security in knowing this. I believe this move is a good thing. Good bye wonderful home.