We moved a lot when I was a kid. By “a lot”, I mean we averaged a move a year. We lived in everything from apartments to mobile homes to houses. From two streets over to across town to across the state for two months one summer and then right back to the very house we had left behind. Some were owned, some rented, and some borrowed (that’s nice for saying that people took pity on my mom and let us stay for free because we were poor).
I can have a house packed like a professional mover within a day. When my mom left her second husband (the one we don’t talk about), the two of us had all of our things packed and loaded on a truck within a matter of hours in one evening. And while this month is the seven year anniversary for us to be in our current home, I still have moving boxes in the attic ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Expert packing skills are not the only things I learned as a pediatric vagabond. Here are three other lessons moving taught me.
1. Change is a part of life. Change is inevitable, and because of the frequent upheaval of our living arrangements as a kid, I’m able to adjust to new things and situations, not just new homes, fairly quickly.
2. Home really is where the heart is. While I don’t have a childhood home to wax nostalgic about, I know that my real home is with the people I love. As long as I have them, I’m good.
3. A spirit of wander. As much as I love being in one spot now, there will always be a part of me that is thinking about the next thing, the next place. I will always search realtor.com “just in case”. I will always be looking forward, and the older I get the more I realize that is so much better than looking back.
Did you move a lot as a kid? What lessons have you learned from moving?
Number two is a good one for me to remember. My parents still live in the house where I grew up, and Ryan and I were in our first house for ten years. I am also strangely sentimental about houses. I’m doing better.
angela recently posted..Stacked Boxes and Finding Home
I will say that of all the places I’ve lived, I’m still homesick for the first real house David and I bought together. If it were possible I would have picked it up and moved it with me.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
Thanks for having me Laura, and good luck on your upcoming move.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
Jennifer, thank you SO much for being here! :) You share some great lessons here, some I definitely need to embrace (and although I like to wander, I like to keep my home base the same. I am SO looking forward to finally having a home base!).
But seriously – how the heck do you pack up so quickly! I feel like I have a weekend to pack up the entire apartment and I might be losing my mind!
Laura O’Rourke recently posted..Three Lessons Moving Taught Me
One room at a time with a steady pace. And? Just do it. Don’t think about it.
Jennifer recently posted..What can I do?
Jennifer, we are the same. I definitely have a marked wanderlust in me and feel little nostalgia for change. I don’t like other people leaving me though! :-)
Lady Jennie recently posted..St Malo
Oh no. With people it is a completely different thing.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
Good lessons! I wish I’d handled our travels as well as you did. I was traumatized by them.
thekitchwitch recently posted..10 Terrifying Things
The moves I was okay with. I was traumatized by everything else though. Mom two minutes late to pick me up from kindergarten? Total freaking melt down.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
Jennifer, this post gave me chills. I didn’t move a lot as a kid, and have been in my current house for 10 years, and in three weeks from now, my children and I are moving 600 miles away, to an Island on the North Carolina Coast – as I am taking up a great opportunity there to start over, in the wake of my divorce. While it’s a happy/sad move for me, I am looking forward to the opportunities that both I will have down there as well as the life I will be able to give my children. Yet, I’ve been dealing with a lot of “mommy guilt” lately over ripping them away from the life that they know – the only life that they know. However, your post reminds me of the resilience we have – and the resilience children have – and that so long as they are with me, they will always be home. I just love this.
Thanks Ilene. Good luck with your move. I hope it brings you all of the best things.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
Whoever that baby is, they don’t need a home because they rock a cardboard box like nobody’s business. Seriously, cutest baby ever. My husband looks at realty magazines every week. He is always on the look out for our next home. I’m not going anywhere!
That baby was my little chunk of awesome, Cady. And she was seriously that happy all the time. Unless she was away from me or you were trying to get her to sleep on her own.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
I’m sorry, did you write something? I was distracted by a chubby, squishy, drooly, huggable Cady-in-a-box!
Seriously though, for as many things as you and I have in common, this is where we differ. I lived in the same house my whole life…my parents still live there. Change is VERY hard for me. I get VERY attached to houses. As much as I don’t want to live in this little house forever, when we do move, it will be SO hard on me.
Also you said, “pediatric vagabond”. I love your vocabulary.
Katie Sluiter recently posted..Ice Cream Makes Us Social
I thought that was a pretty clever turn of phrase. ;)
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
As a kid my mom always lived in the same place. I however was filled with wanderlust and did lots of traveling with friends but always eventually came home. Now that I have started new roots in a new town I am still finding my way and trying to be less restless. But like you said it is nice to look forward.
Cute baby!
Alma recently posted..Restless – #IPPP and Yarn Along
It’s funny how we tend to find our way back.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
Number 2 is so true! As long as I have my family, home is wherever we are together – the surrounding walls and place could never be as significant.
Kim@Co-Pilot Mom recently posted..Designing Home – Guest Post at The Fierce Diva Guide to Life
Exactly Kim. All I need is them.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
We only moved twice when I was a child. From one house to another, then, like you, back to the original house (minus my father which we do not discuss). As an adult, I’ve moved from home with nothing into an apartment, then from that apartment into our first and only house. I will never do it again. I will pay for you to come and do it for me, also feed you.
Arnebya recently posted..Guest Posting at Things I Can’t Say
Cheesy mashed potatoes?
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
We moved around a lot too, and I was and am well adjusted. I was talking to a family me member the other day and she told me how awful our childhood was because we moved around too much. We were never settled. Well, I lived it, and when I told her In didn’t remember it being awful, she told me I just chose not to remember. It really makes me mad, because me and Jami had a great childhood. We may not have had everything we wanted, but we were provided for and had everything we needed. I hate when people think they are better than you. It now makes me think she feels the same about my children’s lives and one day will be telling them the same thing, even though they tell me what a wonderful job I am doing.
Oh January, please don’t let them get to you. They are just showing their ignorance. And I know a couple of mutual family members that would have laid into them if they were still with us. You are good mom, and so was your mom, and so was mine. That’s all that matters.
Jennifer recently posted..3 Lessons Moving Taught Me
My parents still live in the house I grew up in. I never moved anywhere until I moved out of the country, halfway across the world, then I moved every year. When I came back to Malaysia and started working, I moved a lot. I can’t even remember how many addresses I accumulated over the past 14 years. Home only really started feeling like home when we moved into where we are now, because by god, we are finally physically and emotionally comfortable. I know we have another move ahead, a big one, and I hope that it’d be the last one. The one where it’s really HOME. One where my kids bring their girlfriends to, the one where I’ll spoil grandbabies.
Love that picture of Cady, OMG those legs!
Alison recently posted..Confessions
I’ve lived in the same city all my life. Grew up (mostly) in one house. My roots to this city run deep….but. Doesn’t mean I haven’t dreamed of picking up and starting over somewhere new. I think if I didn’t have my children–I’d travel a LOT more. Mitchell and I play that game sometimes. What if. What if we didn’t have all our littles? Where in the world would we be? But we do. And so. Home is always gonna be where we are together.