Goodbyes and Hellos

June 4, 2017

The Kemah Channel at dusk. A familiar sight, to be traded in for new places and new experiences.

We are about 10 days from moving back aboard. Yes, I know, we keep saying that! But the only things left to do are 1) 3 more coats of varnish on the repaired cabin sole, 2) opening the drain in the refrigerator so we can drain out condensation (huge improvement), 3) polishing the hinges for the doors in the v-berth and the head, and 4) hanging the doors. All that should be accomplished this week.

We’ve had a rush of things to deal with – unexpected surgery and recovery, retirement, a new grandbaby...and now the trauma of moving. Sometimes it feels like trying to run through wet cement. Other times it feels as though we are rushing over a waterfall.

The good news is that we are moving! Goodwill has received a carload of our accumulated bounty and will get more this coming week. The church garage sale was the recipient of a lot of nice, gently used household goods. The RV is going to a consignment lot, the truck to another consignment lot. We enjoyed them but are not sad to see them go. Two fewer things to pay for, keep up with, and fix.

Other things are not so easy to let go of. I will sing my last Sunday in my church choir this coming Sunday and I am more than grief-stricken to let that go. It was the one place I truly belonged, and the place that made my spirit soar. I know that I will be blessed again out on the water, but it’s hard to let this particular soul solace go. I’m taking my hymnal and will yodel on the water on night watch.

We are letting go of the predictable. Now you would think that would be easy, but it can be comforting to know that on Thursday you go to work, make supper, then head off to choir. You know what’s next and are spared the flailing around that no schedule can produce. The exoskeleton of a schedule keeps you ordered and moving in a particular direction. No schedule is the ultimate freedom and can be hard to navigate. It’s easy to move in circles and to let being busy overwhelm a sense of purpose.

We are also letting go of the comfort of the familiar. We know all the side streets, short cuts, shops, professionals, and traffic patterns here. All the new places we go will be, well, new. The fun of discovery, the frustration of doing everything blind and on foot.

I am letting go of space. My personal space aboard Raven is basically a fiddle rail in the v-berth, a locker, and the fiddle rails in the main cabin (which I often share with the galley). I am culling books and it’s like cutting off fingers. I have no idea how I am going to store my knitting, but by golly, it’s going with me.

I am letting go of personal items. They are very sticky. Lots of perfectly good clothes are going to new homes, because there is simply no room for them. My beautiful blue dish is going to storage. It’s pottery, and pottery doesn’t do too well in the humpty-bumpty of a boat. My excellent collection of wide mouth storage jars are headed for the recycling bin. Big deal, you say, but it took a few years to collect them and I use them all the time. Again...glass.

I am letting go of being known. People here know me, in the places I frequent. Store clerks say hi, people at church know me, people in the community recognize me. I’ll be a stranger wherever we go next, a passing observer but likely not a participant, unless we find a “home port” where we stay part of the year.

So, it’s the season of goodbye/hello, of letting go of one life to welcome the next. You’d think it would be easier each time, but even though I recognize the whole cycle, it’s not any easier. I do trust that regardless of the discomfort of letting go, it’s going to be just fine. Breathe in, breathe out, next step.