Handful of Roses

Here’s a fun fact about me: I haven’t lived in the same home for more than 2 years since I was 17. Over the last decade, I’ve averaged just 18 months between moves. Sometimes I moved across the country. Sometimes I moved into a new apartment in the same town. Sometimes I moved back to a favorite city after a few years away. Despite all of its pains, I secretly love what moving uncovers – forgotten photographs, found journals, old birthday cards and yearbooks, beloved books that lost their limelight to Facebook.

This transient life, although sometimes exhausting, has taught me how to quickly make a new home feel like home. It’s reassuring to know that after a single day in a new place, you can ignite the stove, light candles, turn on music and feel like you belong.

This past weekend, Martin and I moved into a 100 year-old Craftsman house in Berkeley. She’s a quirky and determined little house, full of light and radiating a warm heart. She knows more than I do about most things – the day electricity and cars arrived on this street. How the 30-story pine tree out back used to be a sapling, planted by a little boy who’s now a great-grandfather. She’s witnessed births, deaths, comings-of-age, fallings in love, fallings apart. I find myself peering out her warped windows, wondering what stories we’ll leave here with her. I feel a sense of commitment and belonging that I haven’t felt before and it feels good and strange to know that my 18-month streak is behind me. I’m ready for roots. And I’m excited to grow those roots with the person I love most in this world.

A few years ago, I came across this beautiful poem in The New Yorker, which so perfectly describes our desire to change, to move. And below are a few photos from week one in our new home.

Keeping Things Whole
by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.