#25 April 24, 2021 Our last Saturday in Harvest, AL; Memories from My Childhood; Slowed Down Nomad Life Activities
Our week has been very chilly, even dipping into the 30's and people covering their spring plants so that they won't freeze. The hot weather is coming for certain because this is the South! Saturday is tomorrow with plans of sleeping in without the alarm, easy exercise and homemade breakfast. The afternoon has been filled with a request for helping Samuel cut some weeds out of his yard. Sounds like big weeds to call us in for help! We so enjoy helping out.
April 24th is my sister, Linda's birthday. I'm the youngest of 4 siblings. I was born in 1964, and I have vivid memories of my childhood self looking up to my older brother and sisters in awe and pure joy. We played together, and I know that they loved on me as the baby. By the time I was 10 years old, my brother Wayne, and my sister Linda moved out into their own lives, leaving my parents with two remaining daughters at home. We also moved that year I turned 10. Moving was a way of life in my childhood as my Dad followed his employment and work as a preacher and minister.
I grew up moving often. So now to be a Nomad and moving often seems built into me from my beginnings. To get an idea of how often my family moved when I was a child, I listed how long I lived in one location as my experience of putting down roots. By the time I married Darrell in 1983, I would say that the longest I lived in one place or residence was 4 years. My time was divided between these states: Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia,Virginia, and Illinois. After marrying Darrell in Peoria, Illinois, I went immediately to West Germany with him where he was stationed in the Army. Since then, I have added living in Alabama, California, Kansas and Missouri. He and I busted through my 4 years by living 7 years in Burlington, North Carolina. While in North Carolina we lived in two different houses, causing that dreaded 'move' to happen. Moving is an upheaval especially when you don't do it often. It is an upheaval even for me, but I know what to expect and that does make moving easier. I have since lived in Alabama for 12 years, and in our beloved house for about 10 years, a record stay for me. Yes! It is hard leaving a place that you love and call your own, a place where you find comfort on your own bed and in your own ways. A place that you have put your efforts into improving and valuing. A place where you have loved your family and friends with meals and parties and through milestones in life. This movement of leaving and experiencing something different is exciting too!
Darrell also quite familiar with moving in his childhood. He likes to say that his Dad worked for a small company called "I've Been Moved", or IBM. The company had that reputation and Darrell with his family has lived in Montana, Canada, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Georgia for college. I think I got all of his places listed. I won the prize between us for most places lived and least amount of time in any one place! He wins the prize for his excitement to keep on going with this movement energy for seeing, learning, and experiencing people and places in our world.
So with all of this movement energy and going from place to place, you may wonder how Nomad life is slowing down anything! It is very different than owning a home or staying in one location with expectations for the next day, week, month and years. Living in one place, we had our attention on that place and our impact to that place and property. We had a schedule for lawn maintenence, bug spray, leaf pick up, mowing, flowers, trees. We had a schedule for house maintenence and improvements. Monthly or anual services for appliances and structural items. We had dreams and plans for upgrades to our house including remodelling, redoing decks, bathrooms, doors, etc. We spent a good deal of time discussing how we would proceed with our housing maintanence and shopping often at our local Lowe's Improvement Center with Darrell's Veteran discount!
Darrell spent his college summers building houses. He learned skills in that trade that have given him the ability to work on our houses. He has incredible skills that have just continued to increase and grow creative and enjoyable activity for him. Every time he would plan and redo a room or smaller project in our house, I would thoroughly enjoy the benefits of that. His skills and visions for remodelling has improved through the years and with the home improvement shows on tv now, he continues to add to his knowledge. Most recently our master bathroom and our kitchen were really incredible because of Darrell's creativity and building skills.
So what I'm describing is a whole bunch of thought energy that becomes actions and creative projects beginning, growing and completing in our way of living in our house. Now that we don't have a house, that space of thought and activity energy is freed up for something different. For Darrell it is the contrast of all that description to something else...but what? For me the energy I have been used to holding has been different from Darrell's, even as we have worked together and supported each other, my major focus of creativity has been: work, food, family, and crafts. These things that I have focused my energy on are still here, with work ceasing for us both soon. But the forms of our projects and outcomes are changing. This is my current description of our transition from what we have been used to doing and how we have been accustomed to thinking and living, into and through shifting down from managing things that no longer exist in the ways or amounts that we managed. The energy and thinking of this management is still in us, and we are aware of freeing this energy to be available for something different.
We are experiencing a huge slowdown: with the emptying our space of things; with facing changing patterns and ways we did things for new ways and new things. One learning curve is how our finances are conducted. How we project and spend money now is very different than living in a house.
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