Week 29

Hmmm...what happened this week? Nothing really stands out in my mind. Oh wait! That's right! We moved home to Kentucky!!!!

We packed up the rest of our stuff (Nicholas will debate how much is "ours" and how much is mine but whatever) on Monday and Tuesday. The movers came on Wednesday.  Nicholas out did himself on researching and finding the best company because they hauled all our heavy crap down three flights of stairs and somehow defied the laws of physics to make it fit into a 17 foot Uhaul in a little under 3 hours. Our cleaning lady came one more time so we wouldn't have to worry about the final cleanup, which was great.

Nicholas's good friend Paul took us out to dinner our last night in town, which was very generous, and we spent a lovely last evening on our air mattress. Not surprisingly, it was a little unusual to see the place all empty but it was also all I had been focusing on when there seemed to be a box every place I stepped so it was pretty nice. 

The closing went off without a hitch on Thursday morning. For months, I had been picturing myself with a big ole belly sitting at the closing table signing documents for months and I have to admit it was a pretty emotional moment to see it finally happening before me. We set out in the Uhaul around 1pm and had a completely uneventful drive to Louisville, where we arrived around midnight.

Our dear friends Tim and Emily (and their little guy John Turner) graciously put us up for the next two nights. We basically just hung out on Friday since we were pretty exhausted from the drive and went to dinner that night with my college roommate Erin and her husband Seth.  I woke up early on Saturday to take the MPRE, which went really well, and then we set out for Paducah after lunch. 

The last couple of minutes of the drive were pretty intense. As we hit the Paducah exits (yes there's more than one!), I almost had to hold myself back from feeling the entire depth of my emotions it was so overwhelming. I have been dreaming and planning and focusing so much energy on moving home for over a year now and to be in the moment where all it all comes to fruition was powerful. As we got closer and closer, I could feel everything that lies in front of us, all the promise our lives here hold and I kept thinking of one of my favorite quotes from The Hours:

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book...What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.