Avec Ma Mère

At the end of last year, I moved from one apartment to another, my landlord having sold the three-family house in which I rented an apartment... I moved all of six blocks. During the same timeframe, my mom sold her house in Northern Virginia. My sister, her husband and their sons relocated to the D.C. area earlier in the year when my brother-in-law retired after a career in the Air Force (my sister and her husband are both rocket scientists, literally). Mom moved in with them while she searched for a nice, low-maintenance townhouse in the general area, and she finally closed on a place a week and a half ago. Her furniture and other belongings were delivered on the 15th.

I drove down to her new place today in order to help her unpack and move stuff- I told her that I'd rather not move the fragile stuff, but the heavy stuff wouldn't be a problem. I talk a good game about being a 'bull in a china shop', but I'm really not that clumsy, I just would rather tote boxes of books than to gingerly place the good stemware in a cabinet.

Of course, we didn't accomplish a thing this evening, after I got the grand tour of the new place, mom and I just shot the breeze for hours over a leisurely dinner and a couple of belts of homemade limoncello that would make a passable rocket fuel... gotta talk to my sister and my brother-in-law about that.

Tomorrow, the work begins, the unpacking, the stowing away, the gathering of the moving boxes. My hope is that all of the grunt work gets done so mom can just rearrange the small, but not necessarily minor, stuff at her own pace. Wednesday, I'll move all of the boxes into the garage before driving directly to work in NY's suburbs, so mom doesn't have to lug the recycling that far when it's cardboard collection day.

The important thing is that mom doesn't have to couch surf anymore, she gets along well with all of us kids, but I'm sure she's happy to have her own place. Mom is tough as nails, and very independent, so this autonomy means a lot to her.