Beginnings and close hugs

A week from today we'll close on our new home. Right now we're calling it our 'vacation home' but really it's just our home that we won't live in for awhile. We won't go there to be on vacation, but rather to get ready to make it home.

Today the previous owners sent us photos of crape myrtles blooming in the front yard, and closeups of the front flower beds. My flower beds.

Such a strange feeling, this being somewhat here and somewhat there but not completely in either place. Sometimes I find myself anxious for it to be a year from now, this 'slow-goodbye' part behind me, and life there settled into some kind of normalcy. Much like any woman who has given birth at least once, knowing what she faces yet again, I find myself wanting to get through the hard part, have it behind me.

Yet I don't want to rush any of where I am right now - our last fall with the Pennsylvania leaves that are such a magnificent display and how our street looks as we drive down it, through the scattered gold and red leaves, then those snowy days when everything just shuts down, and kids grab sleds and packets of cocoa are opened, and fires built, and whatever you had planned gets set aside for a day or so, til the snowplows and salt trucks come. Then the thaw of spring, when tulips and daffodils poke up their brave heads, only to get coated with one more dressing of the white powder. Spring here, after the long winter, must feel much like fall does to southerners who have been baking in the sun for months. Then there are the weekly get-togethers to watch favorite TV shows with our daughter and her family, coffee with friends, and mornings of spending time with our precious little grandson. Seeing the delight on his face when he first spots Papa or Grammy, oh how I don't want to rush any of that by too quickly.

I know the months will go by quickly, whether I will them to speed up or slow down. Still, I already find myself, even now, when I hug my daughter goodbye, holding her a little longer, a little closer to me, trying to soak it up and save it for another day. I know I can't but it doesn't keep me from trying. She's a grown woman, a wife, a mother, but when I hold her close to me, she feels pretty much like my little girl.