Giant, Steadfast Cedars

We finish The Saturdays. My son perfects his mac-and-cheese recipe, my 5-year-old cleans the baseboards. We hop on and off the carousel of graduation parties, exchanging checks and poetry for food truck treats on hot nights. In a dear friend’s backyard, a surprise storm blows in and the girls dance in the rain while the boys kick off a mud football game. Like scurrying ants, parents run in thunder to roll up the windows of their SUVs. The hosts pass out spare towels as party favors.

I’m going to remember this forever, the graduate twirls, shrieking to the moon. I smile at her, my eyes wet. Me too.  

The week before our house goes on the market, the lead costumer of our children’s theatre troupe sends us a text. Need a break from the chaos? Can we make you dinner? We show up on a Tuesday apologetically, empty-handed with paint under our fingernails. Three faces, then four, then twelve pop out from the basement stairwell, fifteen more from the kitchen, a dozen from behind. Surprise! yell the children and families of our beloved organization, and I weep and weep until the assistant director wipes my tears. You’re a mess, she tells me. I know, I say.

We reserve the U-Haul. 

In May, I take my mother-in-law shopping for a new sofa. We search for three days, ending at a local retailer just down the road where she spies an emerald green velvet chaise with enough leg room for her dog. She gives it the smoosh test, makes sure the arm rest is wide enough for two remotes and her daily Pepsi. Yep, this is it, she declares. The salesman looks at me and motions to the break room where employees have paused a rousing game of euchre. I’ll get her all checked out if you want to take my spot?

I joke that we’ll want free delivery for a win, and he raises an eyebrow: You’re on.

I make small talk with the rest of the employees; my partner and I move from 5 points to 6, then 8, then we’re in the barn. I don’t tell them that my card shark mother taught me euchre the night before I entered fifth grade – In case you don’t want to play dodgeball during recess, she’d said. 

We win, I leave, and I fall into bed that night knowing that somewhere in middle America, in the town I carried my children, in the state that held my own childhood, there’s an old store with floor lamps and wingbacks that still believes in small joys, in time wasted, in break rooms and club clovers. I love Indiana, I say to the dark.

In June, we sell our home and everything in it to a man who travels the world for a living. His offer comes through during our monthly tradition with friends: open mic night at the local music store. Between Docusign emails and realtor negotiations, Ken’s phone dies and I dizzily scan the walls for an outlet while cheering for a friend’s dad who performs a compelling parody of Lionel Richie’s Hello.

Later, we itemize furnishings, agree to shift the moving date up to accommodate his travel schedule. The new buyer asks if he can come over and meet with Ken to walk through the home, learn how the theater works, the sauna, the bi-fold doors. Of course, we say, so I sneak out with the kids and dog to avoid distractions. It’d be weird, right? we think. For us all to be here? It’s not our house anymore.

We pop over to a friends’ home, bounce her baby, water the sunflowers, let the boys start a fire. I’m chopping carrots at her kitchen island when a text from Ken pings on her phone: Can you send Erin and the kids home? The buyer’s here with pizza and wants to meet everybody!

We pile into the car, drive home to local thin crust and a bottle of his favorite Argentinian Malbec, chocolate bars from Tokyo. We all love him instantly, swap stories of shared travel destinations and exotic foods and international art. He asks about our Hermitage painting, my favorite Tiong Bahru ceramicist, a throw pillow from Ecuador. Four hours later, we all agree that we’ll stay in touch. This is your home, he says. Come back and stay anytime.

He means it.

We clean out the attic, sort through baseball trophies and heirloom quilts. Ken and I carry heavy loads – the proverbial and not. He is away, preparing our future home; I am here, tying up every loose end of our current one (past one?). We bicker. The kids whine. I meet a friend and her daughter for coffee, attempt to explain how edgy everyone is. We’re like hermit crabs, pinching and clenching our way out of a home that no longer holds us. Maybe, like on a subconscious level, we think that will make things easier to say goodbye to all we love? You know, if our final moments here are sort of miserable? 

I’m not sure hermit crabs have a subconscious level, my friend’s daughter laughs.

We swap our “we’re not a sleepover family” status for a family-wide hurrah at our friends’ home. The boys sleep under the stars, wake up to blueberry pancakes and trampoline tricks. The air is hot and weighty, like the weather knows what’s coming. My best friend and I promise this won’t be the last visit, but we both admit it feels like it’s the last one that counts. 

A rotating cast of friends show up and show up and keep showing up. We load the truck with stacked bins in differing penmanship, evidence of the many hands who have loved us well to the final box: kitchen knife, paper towels, packing tape, vacuum. I borrow a friend’s husband to patch some drywall, change outlet covers, take down our beloved front yard swing. The kids run around cleaning, fueled by popsicles. Eventually, the endless work ends. We whisper prayers on the driveway outside an emptied garage next to a trio of backpacks and an idling truck.

It’s time.

Ken and our son embark on their cross-country road trip, towing photos and memories and power tools and socks. We wave them off with shaky voices – See you in a few days! My daughters and the dog and I sleep on my best friend’s couch, awaiting our one-way flight. We rouse ourselves with the sun, heads achy with tears, and it takes every bit of my will power to choke down eggs and coffee, say another goodbye, get in the car, drive to the airport, keep going and keep moving and keep looking ahead, almost there now. My phone rings. A friend is waiting in the cell phone lot – Pull over if you need one more hug.

We do.

Later she’ll tell me she watched a killdeer in the parking lot, that unlike most birds, they lay eggs on the ground, a risky spot to build a family. Don’t be afraid to start a new life by making yourself vulnerable, she says. The ground is enough, I hear. It is firm. It can hold you. You are safe. She will remind me of this when I leave her a voicemail and tell her I am 7 weeks pregnant.

We park my old rusty car in a long term lot for another friend to pick up. She has twin daughters learning to drive; an extra set of wheels will come in handy. I double check that the title is in the glove compartment, that the keys are under the passenger seat, that the door is unlocked. My oldest daughter nudges me – Mom. Look at the license plate in front of us.

FAITH, it reads.

We fly, we land, we unpack. I dig out the box of Q-tips, blow the dust off postage stamps, loosen life jacket straps and water shoes to fit growing bodies. I rise early to relearn the rhythms of a place we’ve stayed but not lived. On Sundays, we revisit the old corner church we love best, stop in to see old friends, pick up eggs from neighbors. 

In July, my teen daughter and I drive into town to volunteer at an equestrian event. We stand in the sun, hold up crossing guard flags to safely direct Appaloosas down the path. During the show jumping event, we station ourselves just beyond the fence, wait for hurdles to be knocked down, run into the arena to prop them back up for the next horse named Huckleberry. My daughter is overjoyed, spilling over with delight, giddy. This is her birthday gift.

I realize I am miscarrying. (Again.) It is hours before I whisper the truth to my oldest girl. We are clapping for the blue ribbon winners, and there is talk of lunch, the gentleman next to us is asking how many children I have and I am forcing myself to smile, to answer his questions politely, to be nice and normal, not sad or angry, just normal, perfectly agreeable and I am turning white, growing sick at the memory of losing our non-viable fetus in a port-a-potty, an upright coffin the color of a Smurf, a plastic hole of hot waste.

We finish our shift and drive up the mountain where I sleep for 48 hours. I wake, shower. We celebrate my son’s birthday with a walk down the Trail of the Cedars. I stop and read a display of haikus to my youngest. 

Strength in bark and branch / witnesses to centuries / Giant, steadfast, cedars.

We drive down 93 with the windows down, Blue October up. It is dark, I am tired. We go home.

Soon, we will be sitting on the deck of our small cabin, catching our breath. I will learn in a library book that hermit crabs experience relocation syndrome after a move into a new habitat, hiding for weeks as they adjust to more permanent surroundings. They might operate much as I have this summer, putting my head down and getting to work. Another mess to clean, another log to split, another meal to tackle, another trip to town, another wound to care for. 

They might feel a tightening in their chest, wondering when a house becomes a home, and how much work it takes to get there, and how long until we feel settled in a rockier soil than the soft clay we once knew?

But then, they might instead look to the cedars, or the killdeer, or an unlikely trio of furniture store employees nestled in a sleepy Midwestern town. Who can know? Someone wise once told me that hermit crabs don’t have a subconscious level.

Maybe instead they simply play the hand they’re given. Raise their young in the wild. Grow where they are.

Witness the centuries.