Takin' a Chance I'll Be Respectable and Nice

Whenever Kevin and I are going through tough times, we generally opt for a bit of retail therapy, and the cost of treatment is usually a fair indicator of the degree of stress. When feeling homesick or lonely, we might go to the kitchen store and buy new counter top appliances. While waiting for Kevin to get his broken leg re-broken and re-fixed in English, we impulsively bought a house on 6 acres in the middle of nowhere. Last weekend, we went out to “look” at used cars, and came home with a brand new Hyundai Tucson. I don’t know if that is the vehicle we really wanted, but the 5 year warranty was a soothing balm to our frazzled nerves.

My personal stress levels reached crescendo yesterday morning when I closed the door to my bosses’ office, dropped a box of tissues on the desk and said “Kevin got a new job. We are moving to Adelaide in two months.” Then I grabbed a handful of tissues and used them.

I shouldn’t be too surprised or upset – after all, we’ve been in Sydney for nearly three and a half years. That is almost a record for us. In the last 22 years, we have held 14 addresses in 7 cities, not counting the 8 months we spent on the road calling a different place home each night.

Adelaide is a nice city and I am looking forward to adding a new chapter to my alliterative adventures, but right now, in the midst of the change, and having to see the shock and horror on the faces of my many friends and co-workers, I feel nothing but sadness. I know that once it is all under way, my stress will dissolve into the busyness of re-establishing my life in a new environment. But right now, lingering in that pre-move haze of anticipation and uncertainty, I am absorbed with unavoidable feelings of “pre-nostalgia”.

For those of you who have never made a big move, pre-nostalgia is that heavy feeling of detachment that weighs down upon your daily routine as you reexamine your surroundings from an increasing emotional distance. You think: “Gee, I’ll never eat there again” or “That’s probably the last time I will see her” or “Dang, I’ve been meaning to go there, but I never got around to it.” It is as much mourning the memories that are being left behind as it is a feeling of loss at what might have been but never quite fully materialized.

I know that many of you are mortified at making such drastic and constant changes in your life and are still constantly amazed that Kevin and I do it so often. I confess, in the non-existent privacy of these pages, that I am growing a bit weary of tearing down my life and rebuilding it over and over and over. Perhaps it is a consequence of age or a consequence of my lifestyle, but I find myself increasingly hungry for a place that feels like a permanent homestead, a place I can remodel and re-landscape and re-shape into something that fits MY fantasy, with out the fear of unexpectedly abandoning everything I have established - just for the sake of change.

But then, I start thinking about all the new memories that are yet to come, about all the possibilities afforded from ‘starting over’, the refreshing feeling of a clean slate, and how wonderful it feels to purge the closets and drawers of all the mossy possessions that inevitably gather whenever my stony life is temporary stalled on its downhill roll. I love to throw things out. And I am good at it too. Not only because it feels so liberating, but because then, when we are eventually dazed and befuddled in Adelaide, we can soothe our selves by filling the back of our new car with retail goods.



Oh, and with cases of wine. Did I mention that Adelaide (although unfortunately nick-named “City of Churches”) is located in the center of several of Australia’s best wine regions? Which provides adequate incentive for all of our new (and old) friends to come visit us. As my mom said, without missing a beat, “Cool. Another place for me to come visit you.”