This morning.
We are incredibly languid for the state we are in. Hardly packed and moving in just over a week. The cold makes us lie in late, pouring over books and cuddling. We procrastinate, holding no confidence in ourselves, how are we ever going to do it, get everything ready in time to move?
I eventually crawl out of bed and pull on as many clothes as I can bear. While Liam reads the babies stories, I decide to tackle the unusual paraphernalia found on our bedroom windowsill. Football trophies, wooden pots of jewellery I detest but can't bear to part with JUST incase Queenie wants them to adorn future costumes. Then perched among the dusty books, I find this old friend. A bird I most likely illegally acquired while in college, he's travelled with us from house to house. It breaks my heart to say he won't join us on our move onto the next one. His eyes have shrivelled, his beaks yellowed, foot broken, the tail is hanging on by a thread, and his feathers are laying about the windowsill. He is irrefutably disgusting, and Liam has decided its time for goodbye. Bitterly, I agree.
When we do finally get round to packing, the children unpack as we turn our backs. We stop far too often for coffee and food breaks. We run out of boxes and realise the packing tape has also gone. We really are the worst at moving house. As we 'work', my thoughts go back to this funny old bird, I persuade myself to delve him out of the rubbish, I could do this or that to restore him, or work this and he would remain the current state, no longer slipping into disrepair (ok, lets face it, he's reached that, but my mind won't stop battling).
A little later into the afternoon, as if wound up by little keys slotting into gaps in our spines, we have a flurry of energy, of activity, finally it feels like we are making progress. We wrap and pack, tidy and let go, boxes pile up in the hallway. The rooms feel bare. Queenie's a caged animal, turned stir crazy among cardboard, her singing echoes in the empty spaces we have previously called home. Jarvis sleeps unbelievably long into the early evening and I begin to cook soup, distracted with more purging I could do to unused, dusty cooking items.
Chanted loudly in our every being is a new phrase, 'We can do it.'
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