One Load Packed & Trepidation

We leave Wednesday morning for our new place. Have one truck load packed and will pull a small trailer with two wood stoves.

Sweetie, the usual confident, well-thought out planner, has become Mr. Worry. He wants this new place so much he's worried some thing's gonna go wrong at the last minute. He's even decided that we will drive 387 miles one way with the pickup packed but NO U-Haul or trailer in tow for the closing. "What if we haul all that up there and we don't close?" he says. So we'll spend more time and gas money staging the move his way.

By July 1st maybe we'll have everything moved - including his Case 570 tractor, the John Deere garden tractor, the riding mower, the tiller, pails and pails of spare parts, two tractor tires, some sheets of steel siding, and MORE.

Part of this gradual move can be excused by his medical condition. Yet, he refuses to ask anyone for help, though our active, healthy 43 year-old neighbor has offered twice.

This is all an exercise in patience for me. I've moved a three bedroom house in one day with three kids and two pygmy goats in the front seat of the U-Haul. Granted, that was 20 years ago but I can still hoist boxes and pack like a maniac and have yet to have anything break in all my moves - more than 30 since 1974. So he stresses about "really getting the place" and I stress about cherished things getting broke as he throws boxes into the truck. After that I calmly told him to go inside. I'll load the truck. When he objected I gave him one of my looks.

Ah...to be sitting on our new deck watching the sunset and joking about "the move."

Reflecting on this move and our good fortune, I'm reminded that it's not all about me, my needs, my perspective or my desires. This is a huge move for Sweetie. Three years ago I arrived here, knowing no one. Now he's about to experience the same thing.

So, as of yesterday our mantra became, "Day by Day, we'll get there."