Moving Walkway
I’m sitting on the stairs, looking at the orderly vacuum triangles in the new carpet at 4424 Mulligan Way, waiting for the chimney sweep people to come do an inspection and cleaning. This is hopefully the last of the steps we need to take to sell this house – we’ve painted the walls, ceilings, and trim, refinished the cabinet hardware, fixed the lighting, gotten new carpet, ripped out bushes, completed a bunch of minor fixes, agreed to a new roof…it’s enough to make you want to pick a house and swear to live in it for 50 years just so you don't have to deal with selling it.
I’ve noticed that, if I let myself, I turn things like this – goodbyes to places or inanimate objects – into more dramatic moments than they need to be. If I let myself I can get way more nostalgic than the situation warrants. But this is one of the places where I fell in love with my husband. It’s a place where I spent happy days and nights, where I worked on my master’s thesis on the couch, where I spent lazy Saturdays playing Rock Band in my pajamas, where I listened to one of Michael’s roommates tell drunken stories and watched the other play video games, where we walked to get Mexican. It’s where Michael and I talked about maybe getting married for the first time, huddled on the couch and whispering to each other like every word we shared was a secret and a gift only for us.
There are a lot of things changing right now. Life is always moving forward – hang on, I’ve got a stupendous simile here – like we’re on one of those moving walkways at the airport. Some days it’s a slow and sedate pace, and you take some time to look at the popcorn shop and “Back Home Again in Indiana” sweatshirts as they pass, but other times it seems like you’ve hit the speed up button and you're whipping around a corner and can’t even see what was behind you anymore. I feel like I’m at a corner. I’m happy about where I am and who I’m traveling with, but it still reminds you of time passing and that you can never get back what’s behind you. Maybe one of the tricks to living a good life is figuring out how to balance the amount of looking back with the looking forward – and with just living in the moment you’re in.
I’ve noticed that, if I let myself, I turn things like this – goodbyes to places or inanimate objects – into more dramatic moments than they need to be. If I let myself I can get way more nostalgic than the situation warrants. But this is one of the places where I fell in love with my husband. It’s a place where I spent happy days and nights, where I worked on my master’s thesis on the couch, where I spent lazy Saturdays playing Rock Band in my pajamas, where I listened to one of Michael’s roommates tell drunken stories and watched the other play video games, where we walked to get Mexican. It’s where Michael and I talked about maybe getting married for the first time, huddled on the couch and whispering to each other like every word we shared was a secret and a gift only for us.
There are a lot of things changing right now. Life is always moving forward – hang on, I’ve got a stupendous simile here – like we’re on one of those moving walkways at the airport. Some days it’s a slow and sedate pace, and you take some time to look at the popcorn shop and “Back Home Again in Indiana” sweatshirts as they pass, but other times it seems like you’ve hit the speed up button and you're whipping around a corner and can’t even see what was behind you anymore. I feel like I’m at a corner. I’m happy about where I am and who I’m traveling with, but it still reminds you of time passing and that you can never get back what’s behind you. Maybe one of the tricks to living a good life is figuring out how to balance the amount of looking back with the looking forward – and with just living in the moment you’re in.