"Suavemente"

Just in case you’re feeling as groggy as I was right after lunch yesterday. This Elvis has not left the building. This is one of my favorite songs to dance to.

Something that percolated into my brainpan during church on Sunday was the understanding that I will need to get rid of a few things if I move into the new place. [Now Firstborn, don’t you fall off your chair, honey!] I will want to keep the fainting couch, and this might be an excellent time to get it recovered: have it picked up *here* by the fantabulous upholsterer who has recovered several projects for one of my more frugal attorneys and have the finished product delivered *there*.

I had a quiet but unmistakable impression that the kitchen table, one of those generic farmhouse tables with massive white-painted legs and a butcher-block top, and which I still really like, is needed elsewhere. My first thought was to put it in my studio and use it when I cut things out, but I think I would rather have a tall, folding crafts table like Secondborn’s, because it will take up less space when not in use. And if there’s someone who needs this table right now, then they should have it. [It would also give me more room to repack-and-stack all the things that I’ve unpacked since we moved here in September.]

And I think that my quilt rack, an ornate metal one which I bought at Bombay ten years ago with its matching boudoir bench, would be happier elsewhere. Both have boxes and stuff piled up on them at the moment, and when the quilt rack lived at the foot of my bed in the old apartment, it rapidly became the drop-off spot for clothing that I was too tired to hang up at the end of the day.

If I lived alone and had only the items that I truly needed, I wonder if I could keep a reasonably tidy house? It’s certainly an idea worth pursuing. [Of course, “need” is a somewhat flexible concept, particularly when there is a Williams-Sonoma less than five miles away from the new place. I wonder if there is a mom-and-pop kitchen store in Fort Worth like the one I’m getting to know my way around here?]

Firstborn asked a very thoughtful question Sunday night while I was catching up my laundry and helping her with the mashed potatoes [I will miss hanging out at her house every three weeks or so to do laundry, but on the other hand it will be nice to have my own stackables in the kitchen and to be able to do laundry at 2:00am if so inclined]. Is LittleBit truly ready and eager to move out, or am I pushing her out of the nest before she’s ready to fly?

I told her that LittleBit has several options lined up for after she graduates, and that she is anticipating them eagerly. She is determined to prove that she can make it on her own before she ties the knot. [No, this is not the announcement of an engagement.] She has wanted a job since she was in fifth grade. She likes earning her own money and shopping for bargains. She’s certainly no worse a cook than I was when I married First Hubby! She has way more life skills than I did at her age, and an old head on her young shoulders. I think she’ll do just fine.

One of my girlfriends at church came up to me before sacrament meeting and said, “You can’t go. I read your blog post before I came to church, and you can’t move out of the ward.”

Which is when I told her that when I saw the chapel that would be my new church home if I were to move, I had that same sense of peaceful recognition that I did when I saw the one in Fredericksburg in 1991. It may not be that I am supposed to move into my friend’s rental property. [Though I hope that it is.] But if I were a betting woman, I would just about bet the rent that I am supposed to be in that ward, at least for a space of time.

And that is when her face visibly un-tensed, because she knows that feeling, too.

I have been a seat-of-the-pants woman for most of my adult life. That is what brought me to Texas 29 years ago. While the part of me that loves math and Bach and lists would like to have it all spelled out before I take one step out into the unknown, experience has shown me that the best living is right there on the cusp of faith and obscurity.

I have kept things as stable and ordinary as possible for my girls, these ten years that I have been a single mother. I stayed in the same ward as long as I could, moving into this one to put us into what was initially a better neighborhood, and LittleBit into a better pocket of the school system. I never moved more than three miles away from their father, to make visitation easy for him. [And for those of you who are newcomers to the blog, you will be amused/appalled when I tell you that he and I are once again in the same apartment complex, and that LittleBit and I live downstairs and one over from his previous apartment here. He and Fourthborn are now a couple of buildings away.]

In five months, LittleBit will be done with the local ISD. Don’t stick that fork in me just yet, but I am almost done! Yes, I know that once you’re a mom, you’re never really done, but my relationships with my adult daughters tend to be a whole lot simpler and more civil than when I was trying to pilot them through the shoals of adolescence. We are, mostly, respectful of and comfortable with one another. And my relationship with LittleBit is certainly moving in that direction.

Which means that I have just about worked myself out of a job. And will probably have another forty years of adventures still left in me. Hence the cooking-for-one cookbooks and the search for a nest that like Baby Bear’s bed, is just right. And much pondering while I drive to and from work about what God would like me to do with this increasing supply of free time.

Another half-inch added to the Stripedy Sock yesterday.