change of address

in preparation for the arrival of the fetus currently residing in the general area of my tummy, alvin and i will be moving to a slightly bigger condominium unit next weekend. this will be my fifth move in six years.

up until six years ago, i’ve only remembered living in one house, the one we moved into before i turned one and where i grew up, became all teenagered and angsty, and eventually got over most of my life issues in. nobody in my immediate circle regularly changed houses and, growing up, i’ve always assumed that everyone picked a location, hunkered down and stayed there forever.

i’ve lived in four other houses since, each one a witness to a different stage in my life.

when i moved out of my childhood home and into a condo unit with a friend, it felt like a fresh start. it was a few months after arlie’s death and i desperately needed that fresh start.

i was doing something new, something rebellious, even, in this society where homes overflowed with the belongings and limbs of extended families; i was moving out! never mind that we were renting the unit from my sister for a fraction of its real rental cost, we felt like such adults being on our own.

i cried and questioned the universe a lot in that unit; it provided me the solitude i needed to freely grieve and move on and i emerged from it months after, changed but still whole.

the apartment i next moved into, still with a friend, was blue and airy and mirrored how i felt about my life at that point in time. i had just met alvin, was getting to know him, and everything felt light and bright, like i had left all the darkness and sadness behind. i lived in that apartment for two years.

then i moved in with alvin and the twins, and into the chaos of constancia, which was another fun couple of years. i’ve never lived with a boyfriend before and although there was the fear of over-exposure, moving in each other’s space made us grow closer and more accepting of the other.

early last year, i got married and moved into the condo unit where alvin and i live now. our first home. when we moved in last year we only had a handful of things with us, not even a sofa to our name. i remember it took a few days before the electricity kicked in and we spent our first night in our new space, which happened to be valentine’s, in the dark, feeling all giddy and newly married.

we’ve been really happy in our small home and have created wonderful memories of our first couple of years of marriage in it. i didn’t think we would need to move so soon, and the prospect of packing everything up and carting it all the way down the end of the hall is frankly stressing my pregnant brains out (especially since we own big, bulky, heavy adult appliances now), but it seems that every major new stage in my life obliges a change of residence.

so okay, i’ll happily exchange unit 404 with unit 422. after all, the universe hasn’t led me astray yet, and there will be new happy memories to fill the new unit with, along with baby pee and poop.