We will soon be moving into our new home. The three of us together. These last few months have been a funny time ~ packing up, throwing out, sorting, discovering, discarding and making. Moving home is such a strange and unsettling thing. I have moved house more times than I care to mention. Some have been so unremarkable in their happening that I hardly remember them at all. Others have involved long distances and new countries. Leaving one home tore my heart open and took me a very long time to get over, so much so that I still dream of it. A kind of childhood Manderlay, unchanged and welcoming.

Having experienced moving so many times, it seems from experience and reflection, that the reason it unsettles and bothers us, is because in the packing of our things, it is as if we are literally dissembling our carefully built world we have spent so long spinning and gathering around ourselves. Now it is time we transfer and transform our new worlds into our new homes, and we do so knowing that we cannot help but be changed in the process of it. It is that change which is both unsettling and exciting, New beginnings, but which one? And who will we become because of it?

This move is different in many ways. I am now a home owner, swapping the fluctuating, precariously fragile world of house renting for something more responsible, more stable but daunting nonetheless. Gone are the days of gathering friends, and sometimes strangers to share with, making little families out of people you don’t really know. I know, with a deep sigh, that I will be able to find that sense of rootedness, which I have wanted for so long. To know that I won’t need to be on the move, unless it is of our choosing.

So, with all that in mind, I have been thinking about what kind of family life we will have in the house. what kind of family we will be. How we will we mark our days, how we will carve out the celebrations, occasions and the everyday of our family home. I think it will be about building our identities and weaving our memories. it will be the story of becoming us.