Today is one of my last days living in the house I grew up in in Boulder. It’s a long story how I came to reside here, or a short one, depending whether there’s tea. Either way, as I walk along the foothills this morning with Captain, my toffee-colored strapping pit bull, I savor each turn of alley, each vine, each massively expensive home I could never afford for its new or old charm or, occasionally, its horror. (What were they thinking?!)

My daughter’s off to softball practice, and I will depart soon for dance… while I can still walk 8 minutes my class at the North Boulder Recreation Center without turning any ignition key.  I will miss this…all of it. Apart from the massive amounts of work still to do, I am ready. I really am. This house and land has nourished my family for 40 years. I’ve loved and appreciated it the whole time.

This morning I woke much too early. I went outside and padded onto the lawn, squatted down, and said Thank You. I felt a surging, vibrant green answer.

I’m scared, though my fear has softened from all the weird too-big-for anything-at-hand terror to normal feelings of being daunted by filling and unfilling a giant moving truck. For perspective, we handled only the 9-foot cargo van this past Sunday and unloaded it in 2 ½ hours and we were all bone tired…Christopher, I, Harmony, and the two strong and genial high school students we hired through YouthForceBoulder.com who helped us. I keep wondering how we’ll double the whole thing—size of truck, number of hours. But then somehow Steve and I managed to load our entire house into a moving truck (with the help of a church youth group) in the middle of July in South Carolina. You do what you must. We find the strength we need to find.

Monday was my day to fall apart. I didn’t mean to. I mean, honestly, has anyone ever planned to hit the wall, find themselves unable not only to continue to work as planned, but suddenly lying on the couch sobbing uncontrollably? These catharsis are oh-so-normal and healthy for women (See John Gray’s Men are From Mars and “Women are like waves.”)  So I needed, right then, to feel through every single way I felt like a failure. This time, it was mostly about parenting. I think it’s because I feel responsible to get this move done before school starts and to provide a stable and secure home base with Christopher and I for Hannah, and yet the big job was kicking my ass. I mean there was just no end in sight and I was fried. But honestly, also, nearly every “bad” thing that’s befallen my amazing daughter has gone down since we moved back to Boulder in 2011, in this house that we’re preparing to depart. So, I was also letting go all my regrets: I won’t list her challenges, they aren’t mine to catalogue, but there was the day we announced we’d be separating and divorcing, and you know that one sucked. So many more. I sobbed because I’ve been unable to protect the person who matters most. There’s nothing worse.

I felt better by Tuesday. These catharsis are like hitting reset, and the whole cycle of the wave begins again. And, it’s a good time to rise. Thank you.

I just posted a Facebook kudos for another writer with more enthusiasm than I can muster for my own posts. Perhaps this is the way it looks on the journey to forgiveness. You know you’re finally moving forward because you’re so thankful for every flower that blooms along the way instead of feeling threatened by others’ wild light.

I kiss my house goodbye. I’m so sad. I’ll miss you so much. I know they’re going to tear you down entirely and build something new. I hope that it’s beautiful and true, and not one of those that make us wonder what were they thinking. But in the saying goodbye, I have to surrender every illusion that anything golden stays. Thank you for raising me, for I was not an adult the first or the second times I left here, though both times were part of that. And now? Now, yes, the rifts that tore me up and spit me out as some twisted amalgam of my true form have all sifted through and I undulate now, free as reeds in the river. Thank you for first teaching me my truest essence, House, and then holding me through the vast decades-long journey home. I can walk away now without leaving anything behind. This is how we are timeless. Our skin and bones and tissues and fissures hold all the known universe, or our piece of it, and we surrender it back to the wholeness from which we emerge. I love you. I’ll always appreciate you. And I say goodbye with love and grief and trust and appreciation that it always was and is as it was to be. Goodbye, Dearest House.