Ambivalence

Alaska Air National Guard finally got Dave's paperwork all finished.  He went down to the local Portland base and got sworn in this morning.  This is real.  We're moving. 

I've known it was coming.  But when things are delayed for so long, you settle into a false sense of reality.  Our reality has been that we live frugally, but really almost act like things are normal.  Dave has been home 24/7 for the last 10 months.  He has been officially hired for 4.5 months, but the process has been painfully slow.  It's been a long and yet wonderful 10 months.  We have gotten really good one on one time.  LOTS of family time. We have gotten to live in our custom built house on our dream property, enjoying the climate and perfect familiarity of the NW area that we've both grown up in.  We love it here.

However, circumstances of necessity require that we make some changes.  It really hit me today when I was taking my 2 mile walk.  It was drizzly and rainy.  I had Daughtry playing in my ipod shuffle.  It was nice and cool, but not cold.  And I looked over at the brush on the side of the road.  It is starting to sprout it's new growth of flowers and leaves.  And it so reminded me of last spring.  A month or so from now, our place will look less like a wet muddy piece of property, and more like the land that I love, like this: Last Spring ~

My heart and spirit will yearn to "keep" my gardens and flowerbeds.  It will want to plant, weed, and yes even shovel truckloads of free horse manure into the beds.  I will want to mow and prune and plan future projects.  I will want to admire how the kids' trees I planted when they were born are growing.  Instead of knowing that I'm doing these things for the future, I have to look at it with the eyes of a buyer.  This will soon be someone else's home.  And I don't like it one bit.

And in a couple of months, I will have to pack up my treasured things and treck off to an area unknown to me and my family and make a new life.  Part of me yearns for the adventure and newness of it, but the other part of me desperately wants to hang on to the familiar, to the hopes and dreams that my heart has nurtured these last 8 years.  So, I am melancholy tonight thinking of the loss of those things.  Most of the time, I try very hard to focus on the excitement we have ahead of us, but for now, I'll allow a little sadness and introspection.  I am going to miss my life here.