Home is the Resilience of a Child

This is what I know about the resilience of a child…

We have been moving this month.   I don’t mean that in a “one weekend this month” we packed a truck kind of way.  No, this has been a long, month taking effort.  And through it all my children have been by my side.  They have watched me pack boxes, occasionally throwing in their own contributions.  They have seen me pull items into piles, throw away, give away.  They have ridden with me as we take these items to their respective locations.  They have said goodbye to toys and clothes and books.

My children have been inside the car more this month than ever before in their lives, traveling from here to there and back again, ferrying boxes and bags from one house to another.  They don’t blink when I tell them after breakfast that it’s time to get going because there is more moving to be done.  They rarely complain.

When we originally announced that we would be moving the children reacted in typical childlike fashion, what about our friends, our rooms, the neighborhood park.  These things are important to a child so they must be addressed.  I assured them there would be new friends, new rooms, new parks.  They were appeased and so became excited.  Moving was now an adventure.

So, they rode along with me from the Goodwill drop off to the house to the other house to the paint store, all with the expectation that one day it would all be over and they would be moved into a new place.  They played in the emptying rooms and ran excitedly into their newly chosen rooms, deciding where each of their valuable belongings would be placed.

Now, I sit here, writing this, trying not to look around me at the piles of things I don’t know where to put and the boxes I haven’t unpacked and the general chaos that is my life.  My body aches in places I don’t ever want to ache again.  My mind is exhausted and my emotions are high.  But the children are in their new rooms playing as though they had lived here always, as though it hasn’t only been one week of half unpacked nights, living in this house that is still chaotic to me but that they already call home.