Week Two: One More Suitcase

I am almost unpacked. It is the end of week two, and I am almost unpacked. I just have one more suitcase to go. If Jairo and I were competing to see who is most unpacked, I would win, hands down. I’m feeling pretty good about it.

The only problem is that this last suitcase is full of all the things I didn’t know what to do with. So, even though I only have one more suitcase to go, I’m thinking it could be like a year until I get this last one unpacked. Which means Jairo might beat me after all.

Jairo commented to me the other day that changing houses is really not fun. He’s right. I mean, looking for a new place if exciting and fun, and even paying the security deposit and knowing it’s yours is exciting. But actually moving, not fun. And I didn’t move across town, either. I moved across continents.

It will be weird, I think, to be finally unpacked. Even when I lived in Maine, I always had one little unpacked suitcase. Same when I went back to Illinois for a few months. I think it was my reminder that I wasn’t at home. But now I am at home. My home. I don’t have any more reason to stash away an unpacked suitcase. I don’t have anywhere else to go.

I hopped a plane and flew really far away from “home,” aka the place I grew up, to make a new home. It’s a weird feeling to have gone so far for so long never letting myself really settle down anywhere, and now I’m here, on my bed, in my house, settled. And yet, I don’t feel boxed in. I don’t feel trapped. I feel content. I’m happy to have a home, and even happier that I get to share it with my best friend and husband, Jairo. And our dog.