quarantine this

I recently got the kids full time. I don't live very near where they'd been going to school and I very much want them to live near their school so they can socialize with peers after school easily and with increasing independence, as they're going into high school next year. So I figured I would need to either bring them up to me, or after a lot of thought it became clearer the better decision for them would be for me to move closer to their school. This would mean less change for them, keeping their current friends and classmates, etc.  

I rented a 3BR 2.5BA in an amazing school district where I plan to live through their high school years (and after which I hope and expect to begin a next phase of my life.  More on that in some other post.) So, I signed the lease, got a realtor, and booked a mover. Properties were averaging 22 days on the market, closing in under 30 days at that point. So it seemed like a sane decision in that moment to have both up in the air at once - leasing a townhouse and selling a house. The move was the weekend the Governor announced that schools were closing and then a few days later the statewide shelter in place kicked in. Meaning I had a rent and a mortgage in the most expensive part of the country and no way to sell or even prep the property.  Luckily the coming layoffs were not yet on my radar or I might have been lost to panic.  

In the month that's followed, slow progress in fits and starts has brought me to a listing date. I have no idea what the market is like, if there are buyers, if there is enough infrastructure for a sale to go through even if there are buyers.

And I have not even begun to process the emotional aspect of selling a house, which I'd read about and my realtor mentioned but which I still did not expect.  This was the first place I ever really felt safe.  The first place that felt like mine, like home.  I love it viscerally and can hardly believe I would ever sell it.  I think I'm even mad at myself for doing it.  But to compare the life we'd have there with the one we'd have here makes it obvious what I should do.  I only have 4 more years of parenting (well, parenting non-adults) and I want them to be close, sweet years.  Where it's easy to do stuff and everyone has their own room and we're walking distance to stuff.  It's already been amazing.  But still.  There's pain.  And I don't know what to think of it or what to do with it.  

And there's the pandemic in the background, ravaging lives and livelihoods.  Heartbreak of every kind in every direction.  And I have so far been spared.  Millions and millions of layoffs, including in my own company.  It's scary and humbling. Is there such thing as collective trauma or is all trauma personal?  It's also infuriating and sad the federal response.  Corporations.  The electorate.  Losing Bernie felt like a personal loss, surprisingly.  I think that had to do, too, with hope and safety - like the house. 

I'm going through so much and yet the days creep by with nothing happening.  And so it is for us all.  I wrote recently and remembered how good that feels.  It's been over two years since C and I have barely written anything since then.  Here again with the hope & safety.  Maybe it's a result of the virus or the shelter in place, or the government, or ...just... life.  

apogees

I wrote to check in on her and referred to her off-handedly as 'extroverted.'  Because of the shutdown I thought maybe she was feeling hemmed in.  I don't know.  Anyway she wrote me back a note and added at the end that she's an introvert.  And I blushed.  Read this text alone on my porch, I blushed and finally I laughed at myself for blushing. 

We talked often when I doubted what I felt, about whether I knew her.  I pointed out I don't really know her and she'd reply that she's authentic with me and that what I don't know is her history but that I do know her. 

Over the years I've studied the surface and the depth of this, like an amethyst, the facts and the perspective, texture and gradation.  And I found it's a relief, this error.  Bundled affirmation into mystery.   What else do I have wrong?  How exhilarating. 

She becomes a familiar stranger to me.  Second date.  All hope and chemistry.  The pendulum swings, the rhythm ticks up.  This is the curve we've spent years flattening.  And so, dutifully I back away until it slows back down. 

If I write too soon, there's a fingertip under the edge of her chin, pull without pulling.  Weighted gesture.  I'll drawn too near her.  Lips will graze her cheek, jaw, ear to say something soft but heavy.  If I write too soon, I push in and against.  My hands on her hips thighs knees shoulders.  Such proximity is dizzying.  We needed six feet for vastly different reasons.  And my writing -even just in my head- closes the gap. 

Deep breathing slows the pendulum.