On Moving

I keep wondering if I’m only stressing about the move because I am a mother moving her children. If I were only a woman moving, would it feel more exciting and less scary?

My family is moving this summer. It has brought up so many feelings and we haven’t even packed up most of our stuff yet. It will be our first move as a family of four. Since leaving my parents’ house for college at age 18, I have moved several times and it never felt like a big deal–well except when I moved to London for three years with the boyfriend I just married, but that’s another story. For the most part, the moves were annoying, somewhat stressful, but didn’t have any morality to them. Moving my children feels different, my choice will have consequences far beyond myself.

I never moved growing up. My parents moved into their house when I was less than a year old and they still live there. I have had so much anxiety and other feelings about this move because I worry about my kids. Will they be okay? This is the only home they’ve ever known, how can I make them leave it? What if we end up on a street without other kids their age? What if we live there for a while and realize everything is worse? What if there is no good playground? What if I hate all the other parents? I could continue typing these incessant and very specific worries for an hour. 

When I try to separate out my feelings about the move as a mother from my feelings about the move as only myself… I don’t think I’m as anxious about it. I am grieving leaving my home for the last ten years. There is nothing wrong with our neighborhood or life here that is pushing us to move. I know the trees like the back of my hand and the rhythms of the street as people go about their lives. It’s comforting to belong to a place like this.

All of that will be gone,  perhaps never to be seen again. It will take months, years to get to know a new place and find the same kind of comforting certainty and belonging there. I am sad for myself, but I am not worried that I won’t be able to adapt, or find the adventure in it. I keep wondering if I’m only stressing about the move because I am a mother moving her children. If I were only a woman moving, would it feel more exciting and less scary? 

The answers to these questions remain to be seen. Or not, since I can’t suddenly become a woman who is not also a mother. I’m sure I’ll write about this move again over the next few months; as we inhabit our new city, as we (hopefully) find a permanent home and begin to build community. For now I will continue to be distracted from writing here, soaking up the slowness of summer in my familiar, well-loved home before I put on a brave face for my children and contend with the unknown of somewhere new.

I may need to work on my brave face

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All images published in Stutter Over Silence are original artwork created by the author, Katie Gresham, unless otherwise noted.