Counting Your Chickens

Sometimes, folk-tale lessons aside, it is very hard not to count your chickens. Right now we don't own a house. We are under contract to own a house soon, but really, it's not our house. No one seems to be mowing the lawn over there, but it's not actually our house. We should get our son registered for school, but we won't actually own a house in that school district until the day before school starts. My partner needs a new driver's license, but if he gets one now it will have the address of our sublet preserved under laminate for the next 10 years. To qualify for our no-fee mortgage, we have to get a new checking account with direct deposit at the credit union. Do we order checks imprinted with the address of a house that we don't actually own?

We did finally break down and call the moving guys, because it's going to take them over a week just to get our stuff out here, so we are just going to have to cross our fingers that we actually have all the chickens we think we have, and that when the truck pulls up in front of the house, it will belong to us. One time as I was growing up it so happened that the financing was not ready on the day of close, and we didn't find this out until all our stuff was packed into the moving truck. That was Friday. All our stuff was on a truck that could not be unpacked until, at the earliest, Monday when we hoped the financing would be ready. Eventually everything was straightened out, of course, but it is memories like this that remind me that things rarely unfold according to plan, and how does one plan in a universe where you can't count your chickens until they've hatched?

I believe the fancy theological term for this period in our lives is "interstitial" (alternately, "liminal" will do in a pinch). We are in a place of between-ness. No longer what we were, but not yet what we are becoming. In reality, all beings are in a process of unfolding all their lives; just because the Peet's coffee always has Carrot Ginger muffins, doesn't mean they will have one this morning, but some transitions have poor visibility- the future, even the immediate future is just out of sight; you haven't even found a bakery that sells muffins yet.

So here we are camping out on the limen and trying not to count chickens.

Reality

As soon as we moved into our Ithaca sub-let, I noticed these flowers blooming in our next-door neighbor's yard. Full circle from my last pre-move blog in June. In a way I got to see those flowers bloom after all.

So here we are. We've been in Ithaca for 2 1/2 weeks, and the reality of it is pretty intense. Dreams are kind of light and full of energy. Actually building a new life is heavy. I feel sometimes like I'm walking under water. Each act takes so much energy, like clearing a new path through the forest.

The other thing about dreams is that they are huge and full of possibilities. Reality is very particular. Not "a house in Ithaca" but this house. In one afternoon we looked at, made an offer on, and went under contract for the home we hope to live in for at least a decade. It is beautiful- the most beautiful house we have ever lived in. It has a small yard: big enough for running through a sprinkler, or having a picnic on the grass, though not for Frisbee. It has a couple of garden beds that I can't wait to start weeding and discovering. It has no driveway, no garage. It's walking distance to the cool part of town, which also means the traffic is too intense for my son to walk by himself anywhere beyond our block. I woke the morning after we made the offer in a panic- realizing that by buying this home, we let go of all the others we dreamed of: the ones with big back yards, the ones in quiet neighborhoods, the one with a 2-car garage that would make a giant studio. I feel like a character in a science-fiction show looking down at my arms as they re-materialize after a long journey in the transporter. Who am I, really, in this new life.