Forget the Rules

I am moving to a new house this week and I’ve had a surprisingly hard time adjusting to that fact. As dread has constantly threatened to take me over, one of my favourite passages from the Tao Te Ching has been running through my head like water, flowing over all my doubts and anxiety:

While I’ve been sifting through the contents of our lives, I’ve been astonished by the detritus collected in everyday living and I’ve been pondering past moves, particularly the move that brought us to England. It was a reversal of the Westward trajectory of generations of my family, those pioneers who left Denmark, England, Wales and Bangladesh to settle the lush Logan River valley and the desert of Beaver. Unlike my ancestors, I didn’t arrive in England with a handcart, but two small children and a trolley stacked with five suitcases, pushed by a bewildered steward who was increasingly alarmed by the hysterical pregnant woman who’d hired him and couldn’t find her husband in the throngs of immigrants in one of Heathrow’s International terminals.

We left almost everything we owned behind in storage, where it is languishing still. People were amazed by our ability to shed our belongings and start over, but it was unexpectedly easy. I packed away the toys, gave away our furniture and even wrapped and stored my wedding china without much heartache. But then, leaving the books was another story. I hated leaving the books: the double and triple-stacked contents of three floor-to-ceiling oak cases that dominated the study, the black bookcase, the two upstairs, and the one in the baby’s room… the stacks beside every bed and on every flat surface. I let everyone choose five books to take with them, afraid that any more would put us too far above the weight limit for our suitcases. When we left the books, I felt unmoored, like I was leaving behind a part of myself.

We’ve been in England for more than four years and as I’ve packed the 25th, 26th and 30th box of books, I’ve been struck by how quickly we refilled our shelves and anchored ourselves with words. In general, we have much less stuff than we had in America, but we are still ourselves, we still view books as essentials, something to be picked up regularly like bread and milk. But even though my books and all of our current belongings are going with us this time, I am still filled with fear, strangely more afraid than when we made our big move. After such a big leap across the pond, I’ve clung to our little house, unremarkable in every way, our neighbourhood, the path to the children’s school where we’ve watched the frost give way to daffodils, then snails, then the cocoons clinging to the tall black stems of stinging nettle, the June butterflies and the autumn spider webs.

I know there will be new paths, new windows with new views that will become dear to me, but there is still this dread, this fear of giving up the anchor that this house has given me. And so now I’m trying to stay in this moment. I’m trying to remember that it really wouldn’t matter at all if any of our boxes were left behind, even ones with books. I am finding wood to hold — the weight of my husband’s hand on the small of my back when we sleep, the way my daughter holds my face in both hands when I kiss her goodnight, the warmth of my children’s bodies as they nestle against me, the feeling of the ground beneath my feet and the sky above my head, the setting sun outlining the heavy clouds with light.