Moving around as we did, following our Fathers postings, was a great adventure of wonderment, anticipation and excitement but as with most moments of glory we collected our share of battle wounds along the way. You don't get something for nothing in this life, thats just the way it is.
The first postings i guess you're too young to understand what was happening. One day a big truck comes, strange men are walking around your house emptying your cupboards into boxes while others are taking your furniture to put into that big truck. You hadn't noticed that some of your toys had slowly gone missing the weeks before because your Mother had started to pack quietly at night in preparation for this day while you slept.
As the house contents disappear out the front door during the day you find ways to amuse yourself in the empty spaces or a cleaned out room. You climb into yet to be filled boxes and play with the packing paper, and when you start getting in the way you are told to go outside and play, oblivious to the changes that lay ahead. The grown ups are busy, men are shouting orders, "left, left, now watch that step, easy..eeeasy", your parents are talking in anxious whispers to each other.
At the end of that day, dark time is coming, the truck and noisy busy men have gone and the house is filled with echo's. Everything you knew has just driven away and the empty shell you are standing in suddenly looks and feels very different.
An empty house is a very strange environment, to this day i still don't feel comfortable in hollowed out places. I think it reminds me of endings when it should bring feelings of new beginnings. Whenever i move into a new home which is yet to be filled with your furniture and effects, i fight the urge to flee, fight the resentment of having no choice but accept the changes.
Flight or Fight, Fight or Flight.
The only way i get through it is to sit on the bare floor of the new lifeless dwelling, lean back against a wall and wait for this urge to pass. I need to take in the new surroundings, see the potential, place the furniture in a design my mind is starting to make. I need to turn this house into a home. Slowly my thoughts shift because i have made myself see the positives from this change, i get up and i start that long and seemingly never ending chore of unpacking.
As each piece is pulled out of the boxes and put in its place, which i know will be moved many times before i leave that home to go to my next, (and there will be a next..always) the feeling of flight gradually disappears. I am accepting and adapting, I'm deciding to make the most of what is and what lays ahead and letting go of what was.
I'm then ready to look forward to the next chapter, the next adventure.
That is the ritual.
It is the only way we know.
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