Moving During the Great Pause

I bought a house during a pandemic- Here’s what I’m learning.

My shoulder pressed a phone handset to my ear while I spoke to worried parents and scared students about the impending crisis and our abrupt transition to remote learning in our university call center.

Meanwhile, my eyes scanned an e-mail from our real estate agent about the final steps toward closing on our very first home. My fingers typed, “So excited!”

As the world around us came to a screeching halt and we collectively boxed up business as usual, I was boxing up the last apartment we’ll rent (hopefully).

Like many millennials, I worked hard for a dog-friendly backyard for years. My dog Kinzi is truly elated and convinced this is the best thing that ever happened our family.

And even though this is a dream come true, I am dragging my feet on packing or even doing basic things like setting up internet at our new home. (It is quite difficult to time ending a lease and buying a home just right, so I don’t have to move immediately, which likely just exacerbates the problem.)

More unhelpful still is the constant interruption by my fear of failure and my inner control freak who cries:

This is not how it’s supposed to be!

I imagined the excited house tours, visits from family, after work happy hours on our patio filled with laughter.

I imagined meeting our neighbors face to face, bringing over treats and talking about our families.

I imagined we’d have pizza and beer with our sweaty friends who helped us carry the comfy couch into our living room and move our many boxes of knick-knacks my sentimental husband just couldn’t let go. (For reference, this is a man I could barely convince to retire his ‘Dustin’s Fear Factor Party’ t-shirt from the seventh grade.)

I imagined saying goodbye to our apartment and hello to first home so differently.

As an educator, goodbyes are a cyclical and inevitable constant in my life. If I’ve done my job well, students I’ve loved for years graduate and move on. I’m always grieving a little bit.

But I am used to saying goodbye on a set timeline, ruled and dictated by the academic calendar for as long as I can remember.

This set of goodbyes, some abrupt, some brought on by the move, have taught me a painful lesson I continue to learn:

I must say goodbye to what I imagined and let go of the belief it could have been any different.

This isn’t how I thought I’d say goodbye, but it is how it was supposed to be. I am coming to terms with the reality we are less in control than we think.

I am a planner. My life seemed really together when we started the home-buying process and it was nearly derailed by the Great Pause. It is important to have a plan and a safety net, but no amount of planning can insulate you from all the risks, challenges, and surprises of life. Understanding this is a step toward peace.

This quote by Jack Kornfield inspires me to find peace and embrace surrender:

“Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.”

I hesitated to post our obligatory ‘we bought a house!’ to social media in a landscape of folks who are suffering emotionally, financially, physically.

Then a friend of mine commented, “Thank you so much for sharing this. It is so comforting to see that life goes on.”

While there is a lot we cannot control right now, I am hopeful and finding peace. There will be more joy, more pain, more things and people and ideas to which we’ll say goodbye.

Above all, life goes on and I’m learning:

Even in the Great Pause, we keep moving.

Thoughts and opinions expressed in this piece are my own.

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