Not Driving #3 “Moving”

Be careful about what you say you will never do again. Holy Moly!  I am moving and the reasons are not for this space, but they were very thoughtful, given where we are on the actuarial chart.  I called our friend Barbara, who is an awesome agent.  I told her I was hoping that we could find a ‘ranch style’ patio home north of I-70.  We are buying the very first place we looked at, and the very first person who looked at our place is buying ours.  I have moved over 25 times in 68 years.  Let me repeat my  friend Jim’s take on moving – “Hell would be moving every week for eternity”— I am at least in moving Purgatory.

I won’t make the mistake of saying this is my last move, but I surely hope it’s a long time until the next one.  My first two homes were on the lower east side of Pueblo.  At six, my folks bought a brand new house in Pueblo’s first post-WWII housing development, called Belmont.  In the subsequent years I have lived in a county seat midwestern town (Enid, Oklahoma) downtown Kansas City, Lafayette in the Camelot Trailer Park, in a basement near Denver University, four more places in Enid, my parent’s basement, a round house in Pueblo West, Alamosa, and six places in Denver so far.  I have never ever lived in ‘the burbs’.  Here we go…hello Arvada.

Moving is a challenge on so many levels.  There is the physical part, sorting, packing, and moving stuff.  Then there is the doing archeology on your own life.  Layer after layer of years and memories, saying goodbye and hello in the same breath.  Ah stuff, no matter how hard we try not to…we collect.  Invariably I find stuff I thought I had lost and lose things that I thought were important.  A gift that has come to me in these 30+ years of 12-step meetings ( a conservative estimate of 6,000+ meetings) are cliches that work—“Wherever you go…there you are”.  I give thanks for nearly 21 years in the heart of the city.  I have learned a whole lot about the ‘ant hill’.  I have lived in this neighborhood longer than any place in my life. 

My Pumphrey great grandparents moved to Denver in 1873.  They then moved near Greeley 120 years ago.   It seems to me that we all came from somewhere else.  Move on!!!

Onward and Upward,

Mark