Migration
Forty five degrees and sunny. The snow has retreated to small shaded islands. Charlie wants a real walk in this warmer weather and his nose is on high alert. The vanishing snow had opened a world of buried scents. Charlie trots along and comes to a sudden halt – something in the air I’m oblivious to captures his full attention. He keeps me aware of how limited my experience of the world is – there’s so much going on at wavelengths I can’t see or hear, and in odors I don’t have a nose for. There are vibrations the spider can feel in her clever little feet that I’ll never be aware of. And there’s that magnetic field I don’t have sensors for. It’s a good thing I don’t need to migrate a long distance.
Our migration this year will be from the lower level of the duplex we moved into in September to the main level we’ve been remodeling. (It wasn’t a duplex when we bought it, but the first thing we did was separate the two levels.) I wonder if there are geese somewhere down south noting the lengthening days with the same anticipation with which I watch each task completed in our home to be. It will be a short migration for us, and I am so ready. We’ve been completely comfortable here, as we were in Pleasant Hill and as we were briefly in the studio in Hartwick. But I am ready to be fully unpacked for the first time since we left Sunnyhill in the spring of 2021. Actually, with everything we own in one place for the first time since we left California at the start of 2018.
My first husband, Terance, and I moved a dozen times in the twenty years we lived together. Then Liz and I lived in two apartments before we moved in together with Joe. We three lived in an apartment for a year before we found the house on Thomas Drive. Except for the nine months during the remodel of that house, I lived there, first with Joe, then alone, and then with Jay for a total of 23 years. Rooted. Then Jay and I lived on Sunnyhill for three years before we put half our things in storage and moved to Pleasant Hill.
During the first ten years Terance and I lived together, before he got sober, our moves were mostly what folks in AA refer to as geographics, moving with the hope that it will somehow improve life without having to give up alcohol. It never did. The moves we made after he was sober were similar, moving to try to escape the dysfunction that remained in sobriety. Settling in with Joe on Thomas Drive felt like paradise to me, safe, financially stable, normal in every way. It was a return to the stability of my childhood.
When Jay and I moved to Sunnyhill we knew it wouldn’t be our forever home. We knew that twenty one acres would eventually become too much to manage, and that in time, we would want to be closer to doctors, shopping, and the gym. I loved Sunnyhill, but I didn’t really feel rooted there, knowing from the start that it wasn’t our last stop. This house on Averill Road, in the Village, but also in the woods, does feel like the last stop – as Jay says, before The Home or the morgue. I wonder if a goose knows this is the last year she’ll fly north.
There has been value for me in each move I’ve made – a chance to see new sights, a chance to reevaluate what things I want, what I like, what matters. There have been new neighbors to meet, new neighborhoods to explore. On Thomas Drive I had the joy of planting trees and seeing the maple grow from a sapling to a tree grandkids could climb. I watched my neighbors’ son Max grow from a kindergartener to a college graduate who was out on his own. But when Jay and I decided to migrate to New York, I left Thomas Drive without regret, excited about a new adventure.
And now the fruit of the move to New York is nearly ripe. On the main level of Averill the new floor is down, the kitchen cabinets are in place, the bench and closets are built in the mudroom, and the first toilet was put in place yesterday. There is still painting to be finished, and the last of the tiling in the bathrooms. There are still a few shelves to be placed. The new front door will arrive early next week, as will the grand slab of ash for the top of the bookshelves at the front of the kitchen. Then we’ll just be counting the days for the countertops and the final plumbing. We’ll start our migration as soon as all the painting is finished, moving everything that’s currently stored in the spare rooms down here and in the container in Hartwick – everything except what we need for living here until we can move ourselves upstairs.
Living on the site already, I have a good sense of what life will be like after this last migration. The light will be a little different on the main level, and my walks won’t start with the climb up the driveway, treacherous in winter. We’ll be a little more exposed to passersby, with windows facing Averill Road. But I’ll hear the same birds when I open the door, and Charlie will have the same smells on his walk. Jay will have the wonderful new kitchen he designed to cook in, and we’ll have plenty of room for company. But the company will be family and the friends we’ve already made here. The drive to the gym will be the same, and the walk to Moe Pond won’t change. Our next door neighbor, Louise, celebrated her 93rd birthday on Averill Road in good health this year. I’ll have to live to 99 to be here as long as I was on Thomas Drive, but the odds aren’t bad, and it’s not a record I need to break. I’m just happy to be repotted, and rooted again.