Category: Flash Fiction

We are moving back to our Harvey-flooded house in a week’s time. It’s been a year and a half since we were displaced. I have moved three times in my life, and I have come to a point where I find it more unnerving than rewarding. Not that I dislike adventure and discovery – it’s just that I’ve had too much of it. I like to come back to something familiar, without having to change the entire wiring of my brain over the whereabouts of the forks. I like things to be within my arm’s reach. I like the familiar things to be within my eye’s glance. I like my future to be within my imagination’s scope.

Yet, move we will. Moving things around is like uprooting trees. My couch must have grown roots into my bedroom floor by now, and the poor fellow will probably screech and squeak as I yank it out of its native soil. My bookshelf will look so orphaned without the books, which will end up in boxes. A gaping hole in its heart will be hard to look at for a whole two hours until the books find their way home. The spoons and cutlery will be dinging against each other as they fight over their place in the new kitchen drawers.

Yet, move we will. We can’t do without moving. We can’t do without some unrooting. We can’t do without some dinging and some finding your place under the sun. They say, there’s nothing new under the sun. But when you have been moving around for quite some time, you almost want to say there’s nothing old under the sun. But we will get through and rediscover our old nest. We will send down new roots after some screeching and squeaking. The gaping holes in our hearts will be filled with new and old books. The new place will become the familiar place, but, after a while, our souls will suddenly overflow with the desire for new adventures and discoveries. Aren’t we a strange mix of resisting change and yet yearning for it?

We hate being uprooted and yet can’t seem to settle in for what we have. We want to rest our eyes on something familiar and yet crave for the scope of our imagination to ever expand to new horizons. I guess I will take it easy, and start preparing for my unavoidable move, little by little. One box at a time, one screech at a trip, one ding at a walk.