She walked down the stairs and presented it to me, almost as if it was something I was to receive with reverence and surprise. And it was. Reverence and surprise, I mean, with which I met the gesture.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure when the last time was that I saw the chenille bedspread, but now it’s in my linen closet, asking for me to unfold it and marvel at its presence, conjuring up images from a time long since passed.

It was my eleventh birthday present. My daughter will be eleven next month.

***

I had been working on a draft about renewal, about hope, about how it seemed a corner had been turned for the better. I got a little ahead of myself, and so I’ll just write about how unpacking is by far the worst part of the moving process.

My house feels like an elaborate life-sized game of Tetris. Our new space is less than third the size of our previous space, though the lots are nearly identical in square footage. That is to say, we traded indoor square footage for outdoor square footage, and while I couldn’t be happier with our decision to swap an odd and oversized house with no backyard for a charming and cozy little bungalow with a yard that has inspired an entirely different way of life, I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out what to do with all our stuff.

Obviously, the easy answer to that question is to get rid of it. And believe me, that is what I’m going for – minimalism. But I have a really hard time tossing things my kids have made or given to me, things that hold sentimental value. For a sentimental person, that is pretty much everything. So, I’m working on keeping only the most special mementos and letting the rest go. But, yes. It is a process.

In the meantime, while we’re deep in the throes of eliminating our belongings, we’ve added a few new creatures to the menagerie. I know, right? But first, let me explain.

I blame the backyard. It’s just that it’s got so much potential that I have no other choice but to live into all my urban homesteader fantasies. So raised garden beds and chickens were bound to happen at one point or another and it just so happened that the nursery down the street had a fresh batch of hatchlings.

Here’s a fun fact, I really don’t love birds. I mean, I love birds, they’re beautiful and majestic and important, but they are not at the top of my list for animals I want to hold. They’re not even on my list, who am I kidding. They kind of freak me out. But for whatever reason, I thought that maybe baby chickens would kind of help me get over this little phobia. And as it turns out, nope. Not really helping. But my Huckle? Well! He just loves birds, and he’s always pressuring me into holding the chickens. And I don’t want to make him feel badly, so I hold the chicken even though I really don’t want to hold the chicken. Because that is the kind of mother I am. Ha!

But I kind of do love the chickens in the sense that they are hilarious in their very chicken way, and also because of the whole farm fresh egg thing. Which is really why I got myself into this mess to begin with, and yes it is a mess, because chickens are dirty and impossible to house train. So it’s a great thing they have to live in our shower for the next month.

So I love the chickens because of the eggs, which won’t come for another few months, whatever, but mostly I love the chickens because of how much my kids love the chickens. They were so excited by the prospect, they named them in advance, after the Schuyler Sisters from Hamilton. But the big kids were on a Spring Break vacation with their dad’s family when we brought the chickens home, and Roux ended up bestowing each of them with a name so pure, so innocent, and so so funny, that there was no way they weren’t going to stick. And so goes the story of how our chickens came to be known as Duck, Flower, and Black Black.

“This is my baby chicken called Duck!” will forever be one of my favorite things he has said.

***

At some point, the stories will come pouring out, but I don’t want to force what isn’t ready to be written.

Welcome to your new home, I said to him as he drifted off to sleep.

Welcome to your new home, mama. His last words on his first night under this, the roof that now houses us. All of us.

Almost all of us, Emet and Jade won’t sleep here for another few nights. But then! Oh, but then. All five of us together again, in a place which by all intents and purposes is considered home for each of us.

We live here now.

It’s been quite the road to this new address, but I have a feeling these walls are ready for us, they have felt familiar since the first time I was in their presence, under a new moon full of optimism and promise. And now, I sit in the living room, surrounded by an eruption of boxes and belongings, with a head swollen with ideas and a heart bursting with adoration for our new baby blue bungalow.

A break was bound to happen sooner or later, there was only so long I could keep up daily posting in the middle of such upheaval. And especially now as my computer is about to be incapacitated for a brief respite as it – along with the rest of us – awaits a new home, there will undoubtedly be an intermission of sorts in this here chronicle of a major life transition.

But, oh! These past two weeks since sweet Huckleberry’s third birthday have been pivotal, and we seem to be headed in a much better direction – like a sudden shifting of the winds, adjusting our sails, altering our course toward a wildly brighter horizon.

Keep doing the work, keep believing in love, keep having faith that good will always prevail.

There are a million tasks to be done as we wrap up our last few days in a house that holds a very special place in my heart. I keep having these moments where I’ll remember there are only so many hours left to hear these familiar creaks and see these quirky corners, intimate details of a space that soon won’t be ours to occupy as we have done these last three and a half years. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere since I was 17 years old – half my life.

I keep trying to freeze frame in my mind the certain vantage points I love, like the way the wall sconce looks over the secretary desk in the front living room if you’re looking across the house from the back den, the small staircase framed just so by the slatted doorway. Or the way the green lamp on the midcentury table looks from the corner of the couch in the office. How the sun lights our bedroom, and the way the prism shines in the late afternoon with that golden radiance, casting rainbows on the baby’s crib in the corner.

Trust me, there is plenty wrong with this place. And terrible things have happened here. I broke my foot on that small staircase I romanticized in the last paragraph! The electricity throughout the entire structure is shoddy, a lightbulb exploded overhead inches away from where Mister Baker and I were standing just a few days ago, and that is not the first time it has happened. The plumbing is awful, the cabinetry needs reworking, the appliances are old, the linoleum needs replacing, the house needs to be resealed. So much work is needed to realize the potential of this space. And it’s not work we were ever going to do.

I am not sad about leaving, I am simply nostalgic for a chapter in my life I absolutely loved writing.

As it turns out, this next chapter is having a surprisingly strong start.

The next couple of days are going to be intense as we race to get the last things organized for storing, for selling, for donating, for tossing. We are so close! But the last part is always the hardest. And then, of course, the actual moving. But, then! Oh, but then, comes the fresh start. A fresh start for Spring, it couldn’t sound lovelier. If the plans we have set in motion unfold accordingly, we’ll be waking up in our new home just as the Earth herself begins to rise from her long Winter’s sleep.

My house is a minefield: boxes strewn about, cabinets ajar and drawers open, random debris scattered across the floor, stacks of papers and piles of odds and ends all over the place. I’ve never been good at moving, I’ve never particularly enjoyed moving, but the intensity of this particular move has inspired me to focus on the energy I want to bring into our next home, wherever that might be.

We’re quickly coming up on our last week in this place, and so much has happened in the past twentyfour hours I can only image what the next eight days will bring. But I’m doubling down on what I said about letting go and leaping. I have faith, I am ready, and I am not afraid.

I would be lying if I said I really, truly thrived living in this house. The truth is that this house has always overwhelmed me with it’s vast, quirky layout. I’ve never known quite what to do with the space, it’s odd and old fashioned and seriously outdated. And it’s huuuuge. More space than we need indoors and not nearly enough space outdoors.

I woke up this morning with the thought that I’m being pushed toward a place that is better, for me, for all of us. That this place has been good, but it has not been great. I’m willing to admit that, I think I’ve always admitted that, but I’m declaring it publicly for the sake of this chronicle. Terrible things have happened, some of the darkest days of my life happened within these walls. There has been plenty good, in my opinion far more good, but there has indeed been awful and enough of it to warrant a dramatic change.

Today, I am choosing to let go and leap, with faith that where I land will be fertile ground for growing.

We listened to the High Highs in the car yesterday. Mister Baker first discovered them while we were living in Hillsboro, Oregon – we used to listen to their album Open Season almost every single morning. Sitting together, driving through the winding rocky mountains of East County, the sky a little overcast and the wind blowing in heavy gusts, all three High Highs albums on shuffle was the perfect sound track to accompany our adventure.

I had gone out of my way to convince Mister Baker that getting away for the day of our son’s third birthday was a good idea, that amidst all the chaos and confusion we owed it to the child we have in common to honor this momentous occasion as fully as possible, and that we ourselves deserved a break from the trenches we’ve found ourselves in as of late.

So we settled on Salvation Mountain, which is to say that I made the suggestion and he agreed.

Admittedly, it was ambitious. It’s a lot of driving for one day, especially for people not necessarily prone to venture too far with any regularity. We tend to stick pretty close to home. And there were rumors of tumultuous weather which would come to fruition after we came home, not fifteen minutes after we walked through the door. Which is to say, we took a gamble and it paid off in the splendid experience we shared making a special memory in honor of Roux Huckleberry’s third journey around the sun.

The birthday boy, that sweet golden being of light, was an absolute dreamboat of a travel companion – marveling out the window at the changing landscape, chilling to the music, participating in conversation, being generally amicable and pleasant. He even napped a bit on the way back, a rather rare practice these days.

So we left just after nine in the morning, stopping for birthday treats from our favorite local donut shop on our way out. There wasn’t any traffic, and we arrived at our destination just after 11:30. The drive itself was scenic and kind of incredible in that we began just a few hundred feet above sea level, given that we live at the harbor, and ended below sea level, with over 4,000 feet of elevation separating the two locations. A lot of ground was covered in those 150 minutes, and it was the perfect reminder of the expansiveness and diversity of the California landscape.

Neither of us had ever been out to Salvation Mountain before, though both of us were familiar with the living art installation pioneered in the middle of nowhere by a single man on a mission. The middle of nowhere truly is the middle of nowhere, like you’re driving up to where it’s supposed to be thinking this can’t possibly be right? when all of the sudden it appears….out of nowhere!

Even Roux was thrilled to explore the monument, a combination of the long journey in his carseat and the vibrancy of the place itself. It’s bright and busy and truly the work of a mad genius. It’s kind of surreal. Roux loved the yellow brick road, the stairs leading to the top of the structure, I think he ascended at least half a dozen times.

While we probably spent only half the time out of the car actually at Salvation Mountain than we did sitting in the car on our way to get there, it was a super fun way to be together as a family. It took us out of our routine, which has been pretty unpleasant recently, and in so doing allowed us to just enjoy each other and the day.

As we headed home, we stopped at Alpine Beer Company Pub for a late lunch. As it turns out, it was place Mister Baker had wanted to go for a while and it just so happened to be on the way. How serendipitous.

Sitting at the table across from Mister Baker, my heart skipped a beat thinking about how I had always wanted to see Salvation Mountain with him, that it was always something I had hoped to share with him. A trademark of Southern California, the corner of this country from whence I came, yet a place I had never been myself, a new place for us to make ours. Getting to make it ours with our remarkable son in tow made the whole thing even more special to me, because when I’d originally imagined the two of us visiting Salvation Mountain, I never once thought we’d have a child together. And yet, we do. And he’s three! And he’s the most spirited, charming, precious little person.

Sometimes the things we imagine for ourselves are the right things. And sometimes, they’re almost the right things. And sometimes, the things life has prepared for us are far greater than what we could have imagined on our own. The detours often lead to a better destination.

The bumps that have plagued our road these last few months have undoubtedly altered our course, but I’m willing to believe where we’re headed now is better than where we were headed previously.

It was at his two-year-old-checkup that he was finally declared in excellent health and free from any potential residual birth trauma, and that Roux Huckleberry hasn’t stopped since.

Leaps and bounds he grew, mastering skills like running and climbing and jumping, absorbing and employing sophisticated conversation, all with the kind of charm and finesse that just can’t be taught. He is hilarious, thoughtful, determined, bright, inquisitive, and he completely adores his mama. An absolute dreamboat of a toddler, with eyes like diamonds, a heart of gold, and a healthy streak of mischief.

He sleep habits have matured significantly – sleeping through the night, soothing himself to slumber, weaning, reading his bedtime stories, singing along to his lullabies. He still enjoys being cuddled in mama and dada’s bed, and we still enjoy having him wedged between us, even as his ever-growing limbs shoot in every direction. The sound of his breathing as he snoozes makes up for all the kicks under the covers.

Knowing that he’s about to experience his first major life change – moving from his first home – amplifies the poignancy of these milestones. He’s not quite awake to what it means to have a birthday, but he did have a request: baby cakes, which is how he calls cupcakes. So it’s baby cakes with three candles and a giant golden “3” balloon. His dad and I have a special day trip planned to commemorate his third journey around the sun, a unique destination worthy of such a magnificent occasion.

The next time I squeeze him, he’ll be three. My heart.

I’ve been making a point to get down to the harbor each morning with Roux, a little ritual of ours that we both enjoy and will surely miss, a highlight of our time living so near to the water.

It’s true, and it’s no real secret, I have loved this neighborhood. I’ve had the best time strolling the streets of this part of town, what I like to call urban hiking. For a gal who likes to walk as much as I do, this has been an ideal location, the perfect juxtaposition of city landscape and suburban scenery. I will miss these parts.

But even more than the missing, I am grateful. How lucky I have been to have these years, this life.

Quite a few boxes have been packed and taken to storage, but there is still quite a bit of work left to do. It doesn’t really feel like home here anymore, it feels like a flop house. It’s starting to echo now that cabinets and shelves have been emptied. Plus, the big kids are gone, their energy having left with them. Their space here is vacant, a kind of art installation paying homage to the part of their childhood spent within these walls.

What I want, more than anything, is for my sweet Huckleberry to have real memories of this time in his life. When his whole family lived under one roof, happy and loving and together. Where the park, the boats, the library, the bridge, the canyon, our donut shop, our coffee shop, almost all our favorite restaurants, were just a few short steps from our front door. How his days were filled joy and adventure.

I can’t imagine looking back at this time with anything in my heart other than gratitude.