Friday, May 15, 2015

A Change of Clothes

It's 4 am. I'm 40 weeks 5 days pregnant and wide awake. What better time to grab a bowl of cereal and write!

Nights like these often lend themselves to soul searching for me. I pull out my journal and write to clear my mind or just for something to do with myself while my body moves back into sleep mode. Tonight, I wrote a bit and then reread some pieces I had written over the past year. It's been quite a journey!

Last June, we celebrated the one year anniversary of having purchased our small house. Two years is coming up soon - exciting! What I wrote about most a year ago was how intent I was on designing a fully functional closet system for our bedroom. It was to be built into the attic wall (the loft space of our house doesn't fully cover the footprint so we have unused space under the rafters next to our loft. It's currently closed off but that didn't stop me from dreaming!) and consisted of clothes bars and drawers and pull-out shelves and hooks and a perfect space for each pair of shoes. Like those closets I see in the Ikea catalog that are so bloody organized, I'm pretty sure that the owner either doesn't work because he's too busy keeping his closet organized, or he actually lives at his girlfriend's place.

 What I realized tonight is that I was trying to design a system around my present situation, instead of trying to change. I was trying to take all the stuff I had and fit it into this perfectly categorized world where all those things had a place.

Probably because change is hard.

 I used to think that I was terribly horrible at dealing with change - and, I suppose, sometimes I still am. But I am - and you are, too - more adaptable than I had ever thought. Look over your last year and see what you think.

I didn't get my perfectly categorized wardrobe (or world). Fortunately. We ended up buying a captain's bed that I'm moderately happy with. I pared my wardrobe down to about 6 of everything and then rolled my clothing so it all fit in the drawers. I have a box of clothes for summer, a box for winter, and a box of maternity clothes all stashed in the basement. Way more than I would like, but being in the middle of a "significant figure transition" means I have to hang onto clothing I might not normally keep around.

As I wait for our son to arrive, change is imminent. I have ideas, but sometimes I just can't fathom what the future will actually look like and prepare myself for it. We have the co-sleeper set up. We have a changing table. We have clothes, love and lots of diapers. Mise en place: everything is in its place, even in our small house.

The things we'll need can't be purchased at Baby Depot: sleep, support, quiet, patience, sunshine, friends, family. Did I mention sleep?

Ah, here it is: the first avian twitterings of the morning light and the smallest of brightenings over the mountain I'm looking out at. Just in time for me to finish up and head back to bed.

Change happens every day, but we don't always recognize it because it happened yesterday, too. Instead of trying to cram our overly busy lives and our overflowing abundance into what we have now, here's to embracing change!