Life By Kristen

Moving Feelings

My mom moved. Aside from a mini meltdown after walking into the house and seeing it mostly empty, I’m doing alright with this new life change.

I miss having her only a few minutes down the street, and while her new home is only 15 minutes away, it’s far enough to have to plan to go there, instead of just drop by to pick something up. It’s not that huge of a deal, but just a change in how life has been for the past six years since I moved out of my lifelong home. It was necessary though, not just for her, but for me. Even though I moved into my own house, having my parents only a few miles away made me rely a lot on them for various things. After Dad died, I think I became a bit of a helicopter daughter to my mother. Her moving 15 minutes away is what I needed for the push to the next step in my life, whatever that might be remains to be seen.

In the moving process, there are always the moments of “where did all this stuff come from?” and “why did I save this?” My mom has always been pretty good at getting rid of junk, and after Dad died, we did a big purge of stuff because he wasn’t great at getting rid of junk. He definitely was nowhere near a hoarder, but we definitely scratched our heads a few times wondering why there were so many boxes of random things like drywall nails when it had been years since any major drywall projects were done.

Of course, there were the fair share of sentimental objects and trips down memory lane. Laughing at some of the clothes we wore as we looked through photos and remembering various bits of life. My mom had a random shoebox filled with notes and cards from us over the years, from which this gem came from. It was funny to see how many notes to her included mentions of her food, which obviously was all our young minds could think of at the time.

I’m guessing this is probably 3rd grade maybe?