Giggles and Tears

Moving House, Day 13

14 January 2018

A rare moment of John taking a breath at the new house

Some would say the most important part of moving house occurred today. We moved around 200 bottles of wine. John has spent all weekend clearing out the storage areas under our old house (and is still there, 9pm at night). I only helped with the wine today. 

Actually, the most important part of the move today was spreading our dog’s ashes. We chose to do it on the side of the fence that represented freedom. I once heard him yelping with pain as he tried to squeeze under this particular part of the fence. He also learnt to test if the gate was latched properly along this section of the fence because often it wasn’t and off he’d go to visit his friends in the neighbourhood. Well, now he can be technically at home forever and have a sense of freedom. Mind you, it was very windy today, so half of it blew back into the yard and onto us. Emma then hosed the lawn and the ashes into it. We joked how it was to stop the dog barking even in death. When he was alive, we’d sometimes resorted to spraying him with water to calm him when he’d be overly excited by someone visiting.

Earlier in the day I went to church for the first time since a good friend from school days became the minister there. Given his sermon, I should phrase that as attending ‘my local church’s worship service’, since ‘the church’ is everyone committed to a Christian God. My Christian faith is a fragile beast but my comfort and joy from being part of this community may end up trumping that fragility. I feel like I belong despite my lack of attendance on Sundays. However, sheer exhaustion reduced my language ability as I spoke. Names and other words kept alluding me but the connections were meaningful just the same.

Tiredness also gives me the giggles. As I left the old house, probably for the last time, with a boot of six dozen bottles of wine and more in the backseat, Emma remarked that this was not the time to have another accident, given the precious cargo. It set me off big time. I left with tears and laughter spilling out the opened windows of the car (remember there’s no air-conditioning). It was a fitting farewell to our 10 years of life there.