Forward Motion

The first family item to find a place in our new old house. This tile was a gift from our daughter-in-law Stina when we were a family of eight adults and one grandchild. So many babies since then. It is cracked and chipped, glued back together and cherished beyond measure, as most families tend to be.

Today we did a big thing for the first time.

In any phase of life such a moment can be cause for celebration, but at this age, and in this instance, it feels like a declaration of discovered hope.

At 8:17 this morning, Sherrod and I walked into a house as its new homeowners. Hello, it’s us, I whispered as I walked through the back door. Ghosts of old houses appreciate this acknowledgement, I’m told, and they have excellent hearing. No need to shout and alarm everyone. By everyone, of course, I mean the workmen we’ve hired to cast their own brand of magic. I’m not your run-of-the-mill wackadoodle. Yet.

After thirteen years in this house we have loved, we are moving two hours south, from our beloved Cleveland to the Columbus area. Our new house is very old, built in 1936 and located in Bexley, Ohio. It is nestled into a multi-generational neighborhood, full of strollers and bicycles and hand waves from people of all ages. Some look a little surprised to see us, as if they’ve just spotted a couple of pandas cavorting in our driveway. We’re used to this initial reaction and are already seeing signs that they’ll get used to us, too. One of my first goals is to learn the names of the roughly 225 dogs who walk past our house on any given morning. Walter and Franklin are going to love this place.

Jackie and Leo jammin’ at the piano. It was loud and original.

This is a very big move for me. I have spent virtually all my life in northeastern Ohio, most of it in the Cleveland area. It is the city that launched my journalism career, and the one I insisted on calling home through every major change in my life, and there have been many. Cleveland will always be the pulse of my heart.

After last fall’s election, though, Sherrod and I thought it was time for a change. Like so many of you, we are rallying for the work ahead. This move will anchor us. We got to this conclusion faster than usual because all four of our grown children thought it was time, too, and they have recently developed an uncanny ability to speak their minds without invitation.

We are a public couple and have lived much our lives out loud, so there will be the usual political speculation about why we are willing to make this move. I’d like to get ahead of that nonsense, if ever so briefly.

Five of our eight grandchildren live in Columbus. If we live there, we will see them more often, and they will spend more time with visiting cousins. We love our grandchildren and want to be a bigger part of their lives. This will shock no one who has talked to me for five minutes. Or to any grandparent, for that matter, who cherishes the title.

Also, the drive to my teaching job on Denison University’s campus will be shaved from two-and-a-half hours to 34 minutes. I’ve done a little too much bragging, perhaps, about all these miles I’ve been willing to log in a single day. Oh, look at me, unstoppable Grandma in her union-made Jeep. I will not miss that occasional 20-minute car-nap at an Ohio rest stop as the final glints of sun disappear from the Ohio sky. (I’m going to be hearing from Sherrod about this. Finally, he has my confession.)

I promise not to turn this Substack into a play-by-play update about moving. I will occasionally mention it as an excuse for, well, everything—and I may beg for any moving tips you might have. Especially when it comes to that annoying concept of downsizing. Ever meet someone who’s done that? You’d know, because they can’t stop bragging about it. All that yakking about how they sold this, trashed that, gave away all of those. Meanwhile, you’re slowly shifting to block their view of your battery operated, I Love Lucy Vitameatavegamin Doll.

Perhaps this is just me.

This is Lucy and me in an August 2013 photo that ran in Parade magazine for an essay about our last move.

It has been suggested by our children—so many opinions!--that we have too many books. Several thousand too many, apparently. If you’re counting, which we never do. Last week Sherrod and I had a long talk about this and finally agreed that we’ve become a tad too ‘book proud.’ (I’ll let you know when I can define this.) We had this conversation after I had Googled what kids most often wish their dead parents hadn’t left behind and found that books rank right up there with matching china and undisclosed marital affairs.

So, yes. We are going to part with books. Many, many books. This will change me, I know it.

Never mind that. Right now, I want to breathe in where we’ve been.

Any move to a different home tends to shift one’s focus to the future, but I am trying to spend more time with our past as we pack up this place. Weeks before a dear friend moved from one coast to another, I had encouraged him to take pictures of the apartment that had been his home for many years. You’ll want to remember it, I told him. A lot of living happened there.

Baby Milo, the cherub.

Recently, I’ve extended this ritual to something even more meaningful after reading a passage in Rabbi Jack Moline’s book, Different Chapter, Same Verse. Keenly aware of my mixed feelings about leaving this house, Sherrod read aloud this excerpt about a new practice Moline had discovered:

“A colleague of mine offered me a ritual for a family preparing to leave a longtime home. She suggested standing in each room with the family and asking them to share a memory of being in that room. I have employed it to great effect may times, including in my childhood home, which we sold after my mother’s death. Simply naming the moment allows it to enjoy renewed life. The living room is alive once more. The kitchen offers one last nourishing meal. The bedroom releases the dreams that filled it. And then it is time for someone else to create a legacy.”

So often now, I enter a room and summon yet another story about this house. In the rush of the daily mess of life, we have built so many happy memories. Baby Milo slipping and sliding in the tiny bathroom sink as his mother keeps him afloat. Sherrod walking through the kitchen door beaming as he carries in two baskets full of his vegetable garden’s first harvest. Grandchildren Jackie and Leo pounding out serenades on the 50-year-old piano.

And dogs moments, so many of them—and a few which become funnier only with the passage of time. (See: Two Dogs and A Skunk Walk Into a Yard.)

Room by room, I am seeing the images from all that living that has taken place between these walls. So many moments when my first thought is, “Oh, hey, it’s you.” I wish I hadn’t waited until we were leaving to call them by name.

Sherrod’s first garden harvest at our Cleveland home. Our new house has raised vegetable gardens in the yard. Tell me I don’t know what I’m doing.