Movers

One of the big decisions we’re making this week is whether or not to hire movers.  In the past we have moved using relocation packages through Brendan’s company and there is something to be said for having someone carefully wrap all of your worldly belongings carefully into boxes, load them on a truck and take them to the next location while you sit reading a magazine, sipping a nice cup of coffee.  I have very much enjoyed that in the past.  And let’s face it, there is nothing fun about having to lift and haul boxes and carefully orchestrate the packing of a truck that may or may not be able to contain everything you own when this is not something your body and mind are accustomed to doing.  I will admit that I have been horribly spoiled in the past and there is a part of me that wants, very badly, to be horribly spoiled again.  This time, however, any spoiling will have to be paid for out of our own pockets and the price is, well, pricey.  

We had the first estimate for movers today, a local company that comes highly recommended.  Their estimator was friendly, professional, and didn’t seem to mind at all that she was slowly being mauled by two rambunctious children in bad need of afternoon naps and two dogs that could use several runs around the block to tire them out.  In fact, she handled all of that like a seasoned grandmother would and was able to carry on a conversation above and around the din, making me feel quite at ease.  She wins big points for that.  The estimation came in a little lower than I would have expected based on the moving costs for our last move, but still high enough that I am seriously considering –dare I say it – packing our own boxes and having them just move the packed boxes and furniture.  The most disgusting part of the estimation is the enormity of it all: we own an estimated 13,000 lbs of stuff.  Does that make anyone else’s head swim with nausea? 

If we pack our own boxes, would we be more discerning in our decision making over what to bring and what to donate/recycle/throw out?  Could we save ourselves from piles of crap and save a boatload of money at the same time?  Or does it make more sense to spare ourselves and our children the mental and emotional fallout that several weeks of sorting and packing could very well create?  How much is peace of mind worth?

And The House Goes To...

...Buyer #2,  Mr. Better Offer!  Hooray!

Let the packing games begin!

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

And so we wait and my head is filled with questions that are insignificant and cumbersome all at once: Do I divide my perennials and bring duplicates of them with me, without having any idea what horticultural treasures may already be in place at the new house?  Do I dig up the mock orange that grows outside of Harrison's room, the one that once grew outside of my bedroom window when I was a child?  What furniture should we bring, or ditch altogether?  What color will we paint the living room, the room that we both agree must be the first room painted?  How on earth are we going to move without movers?  And while we're talking about that, might it not be intelligent to hire some movers, if only for the big furniture?

There are things here that my heart will ache with missing, like the gardens in front of our porch that we made rise from the dust with our bare hands, lots of labor, and the sheer will to make things grow.  It is, if I say so myself, a place of beauty and I will hate leaving it behind.  In weak moments I will miss the completedness of our house here, the fact that the rooms are all painted and the curtains are hung, that the artwork is placed just so on the walls.  But I know, too, that we can make more gardens rise from the earth, that we can paint rooms and tile floors and tidy up kitchens and make bathrooms sparkle and eventually it will shine just like this house does.   And I know, too, that many of these concerns are about trivial things and that our reasons for moving (more house; less yardwork; walk-ability to downtown, library, and parks; a community with greater diversity; proximity to our target school; better financial positioning) far outweigh the trivial unknowns we are about to face.

I know that the most important things, memories and family and friends, are coming with us no matter where we go and that knowledge melts away all fears, leaving me filled with excitement for this new adventure.

Pending!

We accepted the new offer and put our first offer's 48 hour contingency into effect last night, so now we wait to see if the first people can get alternate funding for their purchase.  They have until 9pm tomorrow to come through, otherwise the second (and better) offer will be the one that gets the house.  Once we know for sure we'll remove our 48 hour contingency from the "green" house, as we call it, and we'll start packing!

And speaking of the green house, the crabapple trees out front bloomed last week and the were spectacular.  Being the totally annoying hopfeul purchaser that I am, I drove past and shot a picture out of the window:

An Update

Four showings this weekend.  I am so tired.  A new offer coming in tomorrow and these people do not have a house to sell.  Keep your fingers crossed!

What have I been up to, aside from keeping the house clean?

Bread baking.  Crusty white bread from the old, orange Betty Crocker; I know the recipe by heart now.  It is so, so good and the actual working time that it requires to make two loaves is about twenty minutes...it takes me longer than that to go out and buy bread at the store.  Why have I been buying bread all of these years?  Harry and Emma are in fresh baked bread Heaven these days.  As soon as they see me take the flour bag out of the cupboard they start begging for a slice of warm bread and we have had some really interesting conversations about yeast, flour, and chemical reactions.  It's awesome.

Sewing.  I got a new book for myself, Heather Ross's Weekend Sewing, and I have been busy building up my summer wardrobe and making a few overdue baby gifts.  The gifts are overdue, not the babies.  This book is lovely and full of good ideas, and I have actually made clothes for myself that I can wear, in public even!

Making granola.  Flora gave me a great recipe and we've been making our own snack food ever since.  It is the perfect mix of sweet and crunchy and you cannot even imagine how good the house smells when it is baking.   Yum.

Finishing up pre-school.  This Friday is Harry's last day and this week will be full of extra activities and special treats, after which the unscheduled days of summer stretch before me for what seems like miles.  I have seriously got to get something planned for these summer days.

Sick.  The last weeks of pre-school just wouldn't have seemed right without just one more illness, I suppose.  We've all been stuffed up, sneezy, coughing, and wheezing, with the added fun of having pollen season at the same time.  We're feeling better now, but the last two weeks have been endured with a slight edge of grumpy.

I'll let you know about the other offer when we know more...

Because 'Happily Ever After' is Really Just the Beginning of the NextStory

Once upon a time a boy and a girl fell in love.  They got married, bought a house, sold it, bought another house, sold it, bought another house, and for awhile they lived happily ever after.  And then the boy and the girl wanted a family so they brought home a rabbit and a dog, and then another dog and for awhile they lived happily ever after.  The boy and girl went on to adopt two gloriously funny and wildly wonderful kids and they lived happily ever after.

And while the boy and the girl were living happily ever after with their two kids, two dogs, and one house rabbit, they found a house that they loved.  It was a beautiful old house, full of architectural detail and the kind of quality craftmsanship that is difficult to come by in this day and age, and they wanted this house.  They wanted to be the family to bring it back to life, to make it shine and glow from the inside out with love.  But this house was right next to a sometimes stinky paper mill and the work it needed was big and scary.  The boy and girl let this house fall away, although sometimes they would look at the pictures they had taken of it and they would dream about the "what ifs" with a mixture of relief and regret.

And then one day the boy and the girl were driving through the same fun little city and they came across an open house sign.  On a whim they went in, bringing with them their wild and funny kids, and the girl fell in love all over again as she watched her children laugh and play in the big open rooms on the old hardwood floors.  Over time the boy fell in love, too, with the idea of pocket doors and a grand old staircase, a fireplace with original tile and a neighborhood within walking distance to the very cute downtown and the very nice parochial school.  The boy and girl looked at each other with big questions in their eyes, then they talked and talked and wondered and worried and thought and crunched numbers, until eventually they decided, in a very grown-up and well-thought-out way, that this house should not slip away, that this house could shine from the inside out with their love, that this house could be the place where their children could grow up surrounded by history and community.

The boy and the girl made a leap of faith in the form of an offer, they negotiated, they got the house, and they put their own house on the market.  And then the boy and the girl accepted an offer on their house.  They were nervous and excited, and they lived happily ever after.

We're Not Crazy

We're moving. Rather, we're hoping and dreaming of moving. We are under contract to buy a house in Glens Falls, a grand old Victorian lady with beautiful woodwork, huge old pocket doors, a kitchen with great workable potential, a deep front porch overlooking fruit trees, and a staircase with lovely carvings and a window seat. The house has solid bones, mostly updated bathrooms, and a finished attic room that can replace the space we'll lose by leaving our finished basement. The yard is big enough, with an in-ground pool and a Rainbow Systems playground set, plus enough extra room for some landscaping and a vegetable garden. The street has old trees, interesting architecture, and is within walking distance to the newly remodeled library, the post office, dozens of restaurants, a brewery, and Crandall Park.

We're moving, but the lovely house is not the reason we're moving.

We still have to sell our house, the one we finished building (it was an unfinished spec house) and then put in the landscaping, paved the driveway, put in the stamped concrete sidewalks, finished the basement, built a deck, cleared 40+ tress form the backyard, fenced 1/2 acre of our 1.85 acre lot, installed a swimming pool, and added an enameled woodstove to the living room. We have worked hard these last five years and we don't regret anyof it, not the money spent nor the time spent nor the elbow grease spent. We love this house. It is our home, the sacred place where our babies took their first steps. We love our neighborhood, a mixture of couples and singles, young and old. There are good people here, friends we've known a lifetime and friends we've known for only a season.

We're moving, but it is not because we're running away.

We could easily stay here, stay put in this house we know and enjoy surrounded by people we like. It would be easy for us to stay put, to watch our children board the school bus, go to the prom, and graduate in this safe community. It would be easy to stay here where our friends are mere houses away. But if we stay here, our children will likely be the only children of color in their class, perhaps in their entire school.

We're moving, not because of our children, but for our children.

When we bought this house diversity was not one of our major concerns. We didn't know then that our life path would lead us to building our family through adoption. We didn't know that the two people we love most in the world would look nothing like us, that they would not, in fact, share our race. And even once we started our adoption, we didn't always think about race as mattering very much. We knew it mattered, of course, but once we knew our children and fell in love with their personalities and the amazing little beings that they are we didn't always see their differences. To us they looked to us exactly the way our kids should look, and so it was easy to forget for a little while that race matters. It does matter. In fact, it matters a lot, especially to children who join their families through transracial adoption.

From what we have learned, when children join their families through transracial adoption and are raised in nearly entirely caucasian communities, they feel as though they are, themselves, caucasian. The problem is the world will not see our children as caucasian and they will not be treated as such once they leave our cozy little nest in this nice, white community. We, their caucasian parents, cannot teach them how to be people of color because we have no point of reference. We don't know what it feels like to be called a racial slur, to have someone pull slant eyes on us (hello, Miley Cyrus). Yes, we can educate ourselves and we can try to understand how awful it must feel, but we will never be able to commiserate with them on this. We can't offer any firsthand insight on how to deal with racism. While we don't believe our current community will hurt our children, and maybe they will never have a problem with racism here (although I doubt that very much), we also know that the real world is not 99.9% white. Once our children leave our cozy nest and nice community the world will not see them as Sara and Brendan's kids who were adopted as babies, they will see them as Asian men and women and many of them will assume racial stereotypes based solely on their looks.

In adoption, the child (along with the family of origin) is the one who gives things up and most often it is without their choice. Our children didn't choose to have an adoption plan made for themselves. They didn't ask to be taken away from their country and culture of birth, from their genetic background, from all of the people who look like them. It is a lot to ask a little kid to make all of the sacrifices in a relationship, to ask them to grow up in a place where they are The Asian Kids, easily spotted and easily targeted. Like I said, it would be easy, for us adults, to stay put and watch our children grow, enjoying our friends and our own feelings of safeness and comfort.

We are moving, not because we are running away, but because we are running toward Something Else.