Thursday, July 4, 2013

Home is where your hat is?


The packers have come and packed and the movers have left with almost all of our worldly possessions... though we do still have the clothes that will be packed in the suitcases that will follow us for the next few months until reunited with our belongings.

I find myself sitting in the structure that use to be our home, which is now nothing more than a shell of a house. It makes me ponder what makes a house a home? Is it the artwork and artifacts that have been collected and the memories attached to them? Perhaps it is the artwork the kids have done that we have taped to the walls for all to see.  Or is it just the presence of having our family all in the same place?

I have lived somewhat of a nomadic life and always with the expression that "home is where your hat is". Whether it was a house in Okinawa, a dorm room in Moscow, Russia, the rack in a Navy submarine or any of the many other places I have hung my hat. Well I have my hat and family with me and this shell that once was a home just feels like a house... waiting for someone else to make it a home.

I gaze to the wall looking for the clock that I have so often looked at before to tell me the time, but no clock. I reach for the book that has always been there to show one of the kids a picture of a bird I saw, but no book. It's frustrating at times going from a home to a house, but it is times like this that allow me to reflect and put myself into my own perspective.

When I see the handprints on the walls where the kids have come around the corner hanging on so they don't slip and fall or I hear the echo of them talking in the living room, I feel there might be a little piece of home left after all.  ~Bones

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Packing: Glad it's his job!

Those of you who know David, know that he's pretty easy going.  At least until he has a job to do.  Then he is.... intense.  Very intense.  There is one big job left to do. The last job before we leave Malawi.

It's that time again, everything left in the house has to fit into a suitcase.  Understand that not once since we have been married has Dave ever been satisfied with how I've packed a suitcase.  He always rearranges and and repacks it for me.  Fun!  I will give him this, he is the champion of stuffing "just one more thing" into a suitcase.  A talent that has more than once found us rearranging the contents of suitcases at the airline check-in counter so that no one suitcase exceeds the weight limit.  You would think that since it all equals out to the same weight for our family going onto the plane, the airlines could just take the average of all our luggage and move on, but apparently that would be too easy.

This morning he asked me to get started on the packing so we are not scrambling to get it done over the next couple of days.  I just sat there sipping my coffee looking at him until he finally said "WHAT?"

I suggested that this time we skip the whole I pack, he unpacks and repacks everything routine.  So today I went through all the rooms and put everything that needs to be packed into one room.   Tonight he gets to deal with this:



He is going to need every bit of his "I can fit just one more thing"  super power to make it all fit.  Glad it's his job!