In Like a Lion
The one about this week and moving feels.
I’m writing to you tonight from an old couch in my new house. We just moved in yesterday, and to be honest, I feel like I’m staying in an AirBNB. Well, one that has freakishly similar furniture to my own. It hasn’t sunk in yet that I own the place, and that we’re here for the long-run, not just a quick weekend vacay. We’re still getting settled, you know?
This morning, I read Ali on the Run’s latest newsletter, and in it, she was reflecting on the month of March, and the anniversary of the pandemic/all the change in the world. It got me thinking about my own feelings about this past week, and how it’s treated me the last few years.
Six years ago today, my husband (then-boyfriend) and I signed a lease to rent our house in the Los Angeles area. We’d moved up there for his new job, and had no idea how much time we’d end up living there, or all the changes in our lives that those walls would see.
Standing in the kitchen of that house almost exactly three years later — Mar. 12, 2020, the day before the world shut down due to Covid — is where I got the call from my parents that my mom had been diagnosed with cancer. That’s where I spoke to my mom (unbeknownst to me) for the very last time on the phone, and the neighborhood I tried to out-run the stress of my mom being sick (and me not being able to go visit her), my anxiety about the pandemic, and, eventually, my grief.
And now, here we are! Same week, and some happy change. Moved on and into our new house in our new city. Same us, new walls.
I wrote last week about my hesitation about change, and I really expected to feel some type of way about packing and moving out of our rental this week. I feel like a completely different person from the Joelle who moved in back in 2017. I’m older sure, but the last three years in particular… woof. It’s been a lot. Living in that house, I got engaged (literally right in the living room — we call it our enragement, because we were actually arguing right beforehand) and then married. Hosted our families and best friends for our wedding. I switched jobs, twice. Hosted holidays, including the last one I’d ever have with my mom again. That’s the house that kept my little family safe during the pandemic (even when I had to call the poison control hotline after wiping down a frozen pizza with a Clorox wipe in March 2020 and realizing the plastic wrap over the pizza had perforations…). That contained my trauma and kept me warm on the days I debated whether or not I needed to get out of bed, when the grief told me there was nothing to look forward to anymore. It’s the last place I got to hug my mom, or speak to her in person.
I thought it would feel harder to leave it, I suppose, due to all of that, but moving day came and went and I didn’t shed a tear. Instead, I felt (feel) a bit of relief — like this was a move that needed to happen. A change that was necessary and not a moment too soon. Overdue, perhaps.
I needed a new chapter. I needed to turn the page and breathe in deeply somewhere that doesn’t have my broken heart painted on the walls.
It’s weird to be in a new place that my mom’s never seen, never visited, though — and knowing that she never will. I keep wanting to call her and let her know how it’s going, or ask her opinion on things, but then I have to remind myself that actually, much like everything else now, I have to figure it out myself. But I like to think that she’s here, in her own way, watching and loving it all. This morning, I saw the hummingbird who seems to live in the tree in our new yard, and I thought to myself, “Yep, she’s here. Of course she is.”
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You know, I never intentionally set out to write about grief, but sometimes… sometimes it just pours out of the cracks.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! If you need me, I’ll be digging out from a sea of cardboard boxes and bubblewrap. If you need a new show to watch, I’m currently enjoying “Not Dead Yet” (features the starring actress from “Jane the Virgin,” a show I absolutely loved) and I really want to start “Daisy Jones and the Six.” xo
Thanks for reading,
Joelle
I always love your blog! Hope the new home is a great start to new beginnings. You both have worked so hard for homeownership in my favorite city.