The first part of this journey felt hindered by my attraction to my old status quo. Even though I knew we could not stay, I could barely stay away. I suppose some know this as denial, but I wasn’t denying anything except my apparent helplessness compared to gravity’s pull. Once we’d pulled far enough away, we felt adrift, weightless. We inhabited middle space, apparently attractive to no place and not yet attracted anywhere, either. This emptiness ruled for a month or two, and threatened to take over as the new status quo. What could we know? When could we know it?

We both knew when we’d stumbled upon the place that could feel as though we would feel at home there. Only then did real denial visit. We spent a frantic few days failing to talk ourselves out of the obvious choice before accepting that fate, this time, would insist upon neither cruelty nor damnation. The blessing seemed more difficult to receive than the curse. But we managed to receive it, anyway. “Whew!” was about all we were capable of saying by then.

Only then did packing begin. A pesky chore rendered impossible until we had a clear, attractive notion of where we might land next. The interim place, the one we’d hesitantly agreed to lease, could have worked except it just didn’t work. Try as we might, and we did try, we could not envision our stuff there. I tried every trick I’ve learned from a lifetime of placating to justify the choice, and even this grand master could not succeed. So I called that landlord, the one who had so graciously agreed to open his home and end our long homeless time with a glimpse of homefulness. I called him and declined. Broke my freaking heart, but I knew deep in my heart that it was the right thing to do. The only right thing to say.

From that day, my heart lightened. The light at the end of the overlong tunnel began to shimmer with real promise. And a new gravity began to attract me. My distance from the shock and ahhh of learning we would be leaving here had also left me further from this old home’s grasp. I wasn’t, finally, so much moving on as moving in on another home.

I see movement and sense momentum, but doubt that there could be any will behind it. I could say that some greater, wiser force sets these experiences in motion, but I doubt it. The free fall of bodies through space, trajectories nudged as we pass through various gravities’ pulls, probably explains enough. I could have been a more willing body and a less worried one, but not without undermining the drama and sacrificing the story.

I woke this morning to find November waiting for me. That patient month, now open-armed, had held the place where gravity might be for four long months. And I could feel the new pull, more than a nudge this time; the clear attraction of an immediate future holding the promise of a long and satisfying stay. I’ve contracted with the movers, reserved the storage space, and packed all the basement books away. I’m finally clear where I’m going now, without a moment to stray.

©2012 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: Homeless homefull