Movement...

 You know it is going to happen. Just about halfway through the popsicle, the damn thing starts to soften up.

You might try to eat it faster, but the suns' warmth is a worthy adversary. Steadily, it slides, first slowly off the stick, then quite suddenly the stick is empty in your hand and the popsicle-remains are on the sidewalk in a brightly colored puddle. The sweet tendrils melting and spreading like a clumsy spider web spun of liquid sugar, creeping in all directions until the heat declares it 'enough!' and leaves an evaporating stickiness on the ground like a scented shadow.   

We are ever riding a current of movement. Our reality, changes consistency or changes direction altogether like the winds hovering limitlessly over the planet. There is a sense of things shifting underneath and then sudden acceleration like a gust of air with a new feel to it...

This move came on me like that...like a far off storm drawing ever closer and suddenly right upon me... Not that moving is a novelty to me.

I have moved home quite a few times in my life. Our first home was in an apartment built on the site of my Grandparents farm in South-Africa. It was a deep-yellow brick building, square and stolid. Squatting next to an identical twin of a building.

Then we moved to the Honey street house. A gorgeous fairytale house, made half of stone, half of brick, with its fruit trees and climbing vines in the garden and my grandparents next door. I loved that house, and it's garden was a paradise for me. I climbed the trees and sometimes climbed on the actual roof of the house, ate the sun-warmed peaches plucked right off the branches above me, and watched the insects as they industriously went about their work. My friends and I played Pirates and Cops and Robbers and I read thousands of books while sitting in the warm sun that shone on that particular garden.

After My Father died, we moved to a sunny, peach colored apartment closer to the synagogue and school.

When I left home, and South-Africa at sixteen, I first lived in the religious school's dormitory in Brooklyn, New York. It was a hodgepodge of ancient furniture, heavy mirrors and mismatched couches. It had roaches and cracked linoleum but it was such an adventure.

Second years, were allowed to live in Basement apartments. So my next home was in a basement with three other roommates. There was no window in our room, so it was quite possible to sleep all day. Not that I ever did that, but with the door closed it was dark as pitch.

After a stint as a dorm counselor and teacher in Connecticut, I found myself back in New York. I met and married in Brooklyn. We lived in a starter apartment, then had a baby within short order, and outgrew it.

So we moved to a red brick house in Orthodox Crown Heights. The chain-smoking, old man who sold us the house lived downstairs with his wife. When we eventually moved to Long Island, I breathed in the fresh air of the garden and looked at the trees and remembered South-Africa.

When my marriage ended, and I left long Island, the community, and all vestiges of Orthodoxy, it was with the sense of doors being slammed shut and locked behind me. The community simply could not accept that I was still the same person I had always been. They were terrified of me...of it.

The next move, involved me as a pioneer single Mom, moving with three slightly shell-shocked children to Park Slope. Alone, for the very first time since I was sixteen, more alone then ever if you consider how the religious community cares for their own, right up until you piss them off.

It was okay... the unbearable sweetness of being true and honest to what I had always been, gave me strength even in my frailty... My legs were shaky to begin with..but with each step, I became firmer, stronger, less afraid.

I deliberately chose Park Slope due to the diversity, and for its trees.

The apartment though, was almost impossible to mortgage due to Condo Conversion rules and my lack of much credit under my name. It got more tangled and stressful and the real Estate broker called and told me we would be homeless, pretty much weekly. Eventually I decided I had tried hard enough, and this was not to be our settling place.

Even worse, there was no real space for Dovi to play and it made him sad. "Mommy, I liked our old house." he blurted out in Key Foods. "I know you did." I said resting my hand on his shoulder for a minute before he walked away.

So I found an apartment... with a bit more space to play. Cross your fingers but it seems like the mortgage will work out with this one. The area is more up and coming then 'there already', but it has more room for us to continue to grow and heal and become ourselves.

So again, my bookshelves started gaping like gap-toothed six-year-olds with bulging pockets of quarters from successful transactions with the tooth fairy. Now, they are growing desolate, wooden stark rectangles without the pulsing hearts of my books in them at all. The boxes are piling up, all labeled "books" in permanent marker.

and I can be so stressed and overwhelmed these days, I feel like a snarled up slinky, a metal one, mind you...the kind that once tangled you just look at and think.. where to start? I tend to panic. How to pack in just weeks.

I can most compare this feeling of being a child and getting your hands unbearably dirty or sticky. This feeling of being trapped and uncomfortable and needing it to be fixed.

It can be scary as hell.

When all else fails, I have cookies and muffins sitting seductively on the counter... telling me stress is eased by fat and sugar. Not good enough, for this I need cheesecake and foreign chocolate.

The cats are totally mystified by my antics, and are totally taking advantage of the chaos. Today, when I brought out the Furminator to brush my fat, furry brisket of a cat, I had to dodge boxes and piles of stuff to get to Ollie.

Ollie did not even bother running, he glanced over at me hampered by obstacles and just jogged lazily to the bed and hid under it halfheartedly.

Zeke, the adventurer woke me up on top of the bookcase, about nine feet off the ground gnawing on things stored up top there. The rapidly piling up boxes had made ideal stairs and he clearly plans to take full advantage of it.

Of course there are other ways to cope..

My good friends have been here for me to cry to, or laugh helplessly with, at the sheer, ridiculous amount of work to be done.

As my friend says, moving is a lot like labor... the payoff is momentous... you are working towards something wonderful, more space for living...for being alive....