Transience

A little more than two years ago, Cody and I lived together in downtown Lafayette.  Our one bedroom apartment overlooked beautiful buildings from the fourth floor of a historic complex in which President Grant had stayed when it was used as a hotel.  Despite its slanting floor, persistent issues with temperature regulation, and occasional lapses in hot water, that apartment was home because Cody and I were together.

During the spring of 2010, Cody and I had taken classes at St. John's Episcopal Church to better understand the denomination and ready ourselves for confirmation into the church.  As the time drew near for the ceremony, our priest handed us paperwork asking for personal information.  One question stood out to me as unanswerable: "permanent address".

At this point in my life, my parents were in the process of selling my childhood home--the home in which we had lived for the past nineteen years.  I was within months of graduating college and had no idea where I would be able to find a teaching position or a full-time job outside of my field that provided health benefits.  Cody had not yet received his acceptance into his Master's program.  A "permanent address" seemed like an impossible dream, and I realized for the first time how transient life could be.  Cody and I took our papers back to the apartment, and I cried over those two words.

The next day I filled in the pesky, strife-creating blank with my home address--the address I had used from the time I was able to understand the concept of a house having a numerical designation.  I found myself wishing away the next couple of months so I would know where on earth I was going to move, where my parents would end up living, and if I would be able to continue cohabitating with my fiancée.

Of course, readers, you know part of the conclusion to that chapter of my life.  I began working at my small, rural school in west central Indiana while Cody began attending a small, private university in northwest Indiana. I live with my parents, still in my childhood home due to a snafu with my dad's old company.  As I type this, I am looking around at the bedroom in which I have slept since I was four years old; the walls are a different color, the décor has changed, and my bed is on the side of the room that housed my sister's crib once upon a time, but I can see all of its (and my) transformations as clear as day.

Two years after having that initial existential crisis, I find myself thrown back into the lesson that there is no such thing as permanence.  Life is fleeting, so why should living arrangements follow a different rule?  There is a "for sale" sign in front of the house again, along with a lock box on the side door to the garage that pinches my fingers every time I close it--a nasty reminder that my house will no longer be my own.  Cody is eagerly and anxiously awaiting news about being accepted into a Ph.D. program for neuroscience.  Everyone seems to be spinning around me at warp speed while I must be reactive.  If the house sells and closes before the school year ends, I have to get an apartment.  If Cody does not get into the Ph.D. program, I must move to northwest Indiana to avoid a third year apart from my husband--something neither of our mental faculties could survive.  The job market for teaching is still difficult; if I have to leave my job, do I leave teaching altogether?  Do I embark on a new career?  Do I take a job beneath my education level and free up some time for me to write?

Regardless of the outcome of the next few months, I know that my second bout with transience is less frightening than the first.  With certainty, I can say that I will be living with my husband after this school year, which makes me ecstatic. I can say that I will either be living in northwest Indiana or southwest Indiana.  I can say that I will have health insurance, either on my current policy or added onto Cody's.  I will work at my current place of employment or be in the process of interviewing within a smaller area of Indiana.  If I keep all of the things I know conclusively in the forefront of my thoughts, the unknowns seem far more bearable--and this time, I'm adult enough to handle the changes with just a teensy flicker of excitement.

(Now I just need to become a famous author so I can buy this house back and turn it into my childhood museum.)     ;)