Guess What We’re Doing?

No prizes offered, just the quiet satisfaction of your own cleverness:

Photo by Roo Reynolds

Moving House

Soon the house will be filled again,
Our boxes have been carried off,
The walls are bare, we only leave
White patches where our pictures hung.
Dust settles widely now among
The places where we used to move.

And though we are most glad to go
We want to leave some hint behind,
Nothing so powerful as a ghost
But some part of us to remind
New tenants whom we do not know
That the old house is not resigned

To wind and dust and spaces cut
Clean where our furniture was put.
We want to flourish our old selves
And frighten the new owners, but
We quite forget they will be glad
To find some trace upon the shelves
Of our own past, that what they dread,
Like us, is space untenanted.

Elizabeth Jennings

Tomorrow the packers, Thursday the loaders, Friday the deliverers — sounds like a nursery rhyme, doesn’t it?

This lovely photo and elegant poem paint a serene facade over what is in fact a scene of almost unbridled chaos. The Last Laundry will be done tonight and the Last Hot Meal has already been cooked. (Heating up soup doesn’t count.). What moving calls for besides equanimity, perseverance, unflappability, faith in the future and major organizational skills: COURAGE.

So until we have navigated our way out of this harbor and safely into the next, my blog posts encourage me  (and anyone else in the market for some) to

GAMBATTE

that wonderful Japanese phrase meaning, Keep on with it! Go ahead! Forward! Be Strong! In short, courage!