In golf, Saturday is moving day, the day to position oneself for a run at a win on the final day of play. If you can move on Saturday you can win on Sunday.
Our moving day was today, Wednesday, May 24, 2017. We just had to be in position for the win as we had been losing for so long -- 228 days. A tree fell on our home on a Saturday, coincidentally, the 8th of October, and we moved out. We moved eight separate times from October to May -- hotel to rental house, back to the hotel when the heat quit working, back to the dreaded rental house with it's awful smell and muddy back yard. We just kept moving and moving.
And finally, a few days before Memorial Day we moved back into our home.
I had prided myself, arrogantly, that I was not a mover. I am a durhamite and settled here and specifically in this particular home once yellow, now a beautiful grey. We had been in our same home, in the same town, for nearly a decade when we were forced out, no thanks to Hurricane Matthew and Loblolly Pine that split through our roof. Rain poured in for the next 12 hours.
As I drove this morning from the Residence Inn on Main Street in Durham to our home on Denada Path, I started to feel alive and hopeful. I started to imagine that I could write again and I could make plans for the Snow in October project on a daily basis. I had begun the project as a balm, a source of healing in the days after the disaster, but mostly I couldn't find the words. For November and December, I could barely drag myself out of bed.
But today was different. As a I drove and returned home, I felt the full weight of Spring turning to Summer. I felt like Durham was a place I could grow old again, and not just a town where all my dreams had been cast away.
I stopped for coffee at the drive-thru Starbucks on 15-501 for Kristen and the movers from Trosa. I knew that most of the guys who would be helping with the move would be new to the addiction program, probably living in the main quarters on James Street, between our house and the hotel where we had stayed the last 24 days. The month of May included three more delays by the worst contractors and sleaziest company I have ever worked with. Too awful to even mention. Ask me face to face, and I will tell you. Or maybe, by God's grace, I will forget them completely.
But the Trosa guys, I knew these guys would be super polite, not the most polished movers, but still excellent service and just part of how we move and how we celebrate Christmas -- with one of their Frazier Firs. Can't wait to have Christmas back at home tomorrow, plus seven months.
As I write this, lstening to James River Blues by Old Crow Medicine Show.
Thinking of James Street, where Trosa residents live and sort out their next step. Reminiscing about the James River in Richmond, where William and I crossed a few weeks back and then watched Keslowski and Jimmy Johnson race with 40 other guys as a distraction to the long exclusion from our home. As I drove to help with the unpacking at the house, optimistic about what Kristen would already be directing, I started thinking about NASCAR and this weekend's race in Charlotte. I thought once I got back here to Denada Path that I'd never want to travel, never want to leave again. But instead, I started to feel settled, knowing this time for the first time in a long time, I would be coming back to my proper home. I could go away this Sunday and Monday and leave the house to Kristen alone, which she would love, the chance to work alone and fix things up with clear eyes to fill her heart so she can't lose again. Thanks Coach Taylor and Touchdown Tammy and all the crew from Dillon, Texas.
The stream of consciousness style is intended to show what it takes to survive and distract from difficult times -- music and Netflix and golf and stock car racing were just a few of the ways that I kept moving forward. We're back!!!
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