TL:DR Still Moving

I’m still moving. Always moving at the moment. It’s hard to keep track of the days and harder to keep track of places. I am travelling hundreds of miles a week. I have begun to mark my journeys with standout landmarks and already have nicknames for some of the roads. I am particularly proud of ‘The Hamstreet Bollock.’ Even prouder when we came a slightly different way a few days ago and Jason announced: ‘We’re doing a reverse Hamstreet Bollock. It’s like figure skating.’

At the boat I pack things into boxes and bags and into cars and vans. In the spaces left behind I run around frantically buying replacements so that the boat is still workable and Oscar has things to take with him to start all over again when he eventually gets a place of his own.

I am picking up new skills, trawling the charity shops for things I haven’t had to buy for decades now. Instead of hunting for art, I find places where there are boxes of assorted cutlery to pick through. I feel the weight of dinner knives, balancing them in my hand. I regard soup spoons. I heft chopping boards and colanders. I try to balance practicality against my desire to furnish my child with cheese knives, just in case he has a dinner party, knowing he is extremely unlikely to host a dinner party.

I know that it is the mother in me who doesn’t know what else to do for him. It is the wild belief that if I send my last born into the world with armour made of grapefruit spoons, and furnish him with saucepans to hold all my vast, unspoken love, that he will thrive in the world and think of me.

I know that while I am so happy to be making a home for myself again, I am so sad that this is the end of the home I share with him. Every box I fill punches another hole in that existence. While I am relieved to know that soon I will wake up in the surety that my fridge will be full and my biscuit stash won’t be cannibalised in the night, I will miss his midnight Scooby Doo sandwiches and his gangling, breath squeezing hugs. He will still be there - of course he will, but everything will be different, and it is harder because he is the last one to go. It makes me think of the girls moving out. I get sad all over again. It seems careless to lose all three of them.

At the house I unpack box after box. After so many moves, some of the boxes are disingenuous to say the least. The box that says; ‘Kitchen Mixer - VERY HEAVY’ contains art books, still very heavy. The box marked ‘Dinky Toys,’ holds teapots. One box holds bits of drum kit and what was a beautiful oilcloth which has now gone horribly wrong in ways I cannot adequately describe, but which mark it firmly for the tip pile. I still cannot find the copper jugs my mum gave me, which hold gallons and which should be the easiest things to rediscover, yet they remain elusive.

There is so much stuff. I chart obsessions through the boxes. Here is my collection of Moomin mugs. Here are all the Burleigh ware bowls. Here’s all the green glassware. It keeps coming, all the passions, all the loves, all the things.

At the end of one day of boxes I burst into tears. I find that I am ashamed of the unslaked need oozing out of the boxes. All that money spent on things. All that time spent buying stuff. All that stuff, clamouring for my attention. The past is loud and insistent. I feel battered by the noise and dirty with the evidence of my behaviour.

I had thought it would be joyful to be reunited with my things. Some of it is joyful, truly, but it is so much more complicated than that. I don’t know what to do with all of this stuff, physical and emotional. In the end I talk to Jason in a jumble of words, unpacking my thoughts alongside the boxes.

He reminds me to be kind to myself. He reminds me how much work and healing has gone into the last two years. He reminds me how pared down my life became. No wonder all this abundance is overwhelming. Of course I will be different now. He reminds me that I can take my time and figure things out. He reminds me that I can forgive myself. I keep unpacking. Having too many Moomin mugs is not a terrible crime, even though it might feel like one.

I scrub and clean. The oven surpasses ones I have seen in the days of shared, student housing. It has archaeology. I am convinced some kind of animal sacrifice occurred on a fairly regular basis. It takes me eight hours to clean it, and I lose layers of skin to its demand for flesh.

I hate cleaning, but in a new house it feels more like a ritual than a chore. It says goodbye to what was and makes space for new life in the house. It’s a spell of welcome.

In between the packing and unpacking there are trips to buy critical things. A sofa, a dining table and chairs, a mop and bucket, a hoover and mattresses amongst other things. Today I took delivery of a television, a paring knife and six lightbulbs. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

As I unpack I begin to create islands of normality in the house. Beds get built and made. Bathrooms are scrubbed and stocked. The kitchen is populated with everything except food, which still remains largely eaten at service stations. The sofa gets cushions. The dining table could be used to eat at, if we had anything but Custard Creams in the house. The house becomes liveable, even though we only live here a few days a week at the moment.

I count my lucky stars that I have the means to make things feel like home. This is one of the good things about having a lot of stuff. I roll out rugs that give colour and personality to blank floors. I dress chairs with mismatched cushions and throws. I utilise my collection of vintage stools to stand as side tables and furnish them with lamps. (My tips for lamps is to buy cheap lamp bases from charity shops and spend money on shades.) I use vintage trunks and boxes as coffee tables and store Jason’s ‘useful’ collection of cables in one. I put shoes in the other. The shoe racks are still buried under boxes. The place where the shoe racks will go is likewise buried under boxes.

Now there is mostly books and art left to unpack. The art will start to go up when we can be sure that we won’t put a nail through the mains’ power and/or run into paintings with a sideboard. There are too many paintings for the number of walls, so difficult decisions will have to be made. It will take time.

The books need shelves and this is where the next big project starts. We are gutting what was the lounge and turning it into a library. We are going to learn how to do this ourselves. It’s possible that it will go horribly wrong, but it’s also possible that we might pull it off. That’s an exciting thought.

I have torn up grey carpet, which was most satisfactory. I have removed yards of gripper rod. I have taken down weird shelves and dado rails. I have removed a small and inappropriate splurge of wallpaper festooned with chrysanthemums. I have purchased green and pink paint. I am itching to wield a brush but the walls need sugar soap and filler and there are some random wall lights that need removing first. I hate that I know this and that it will be worth doing it properly.

In the meantime, time runs fast in every direction. Oscar is cast in his final play at college. He will be Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. He is excited. We are proud. He spends his days muttering lines and aching from choreographing fights. We will see him perform at the end of the month and then he’s done until his foundation course starts. I hope he finds a job to fill his summer. Then he can buy his own grapefruit spoons.

Tilly has finished setting up her degree show exhibition which we will see after marking next week. She turned 26 on Friday and another year turns. She is spending every spare moment applying for jobs. Her partner has a few more months of study to go, but will soon be a fully qualified nurse. It’s taken guts and determination to get this far, working and studying in a disintegrating NHS. We are cheering him on.

Tallulah and her partner have now handed in their dissertations and finished lectures. We will see them graduate in August. In the meantime they are working multiple jobs and have just started house hunting. They are all grown up too.

Everything is moving. It always is of course, it’s just that sometimes it’s louder and more insistent than usual. I am moving between all these moments, hurtling to be present for this and that important thing. Life demands and I attempt to supply. Substack gets short shrift right now. I’m sure you see why.