We've been talking about moving next summer. We've been talking about my applying to Ph.D programs in creative writing. I've been fantasizing about being a student (and teacher) again, about sitting with a sheaf of syllabi and plotting out the weeks of a season. For now, though, if we are leaving, I need to relish this landscape because I know next year this time we might be somewhere very unfamiliar. It's strange to me to not be a Midwesterner, though I've lived a life divided into geographic thirds: Chattanooga until about age twelve, Wisconsin until nineteen, and Minnesota until now. The address we have now, the first home I've owned, is my longest-held address--it will be ten years next summer. I put my wedding dress on in the tiny bedroom I call the poetry room. I brought my two babies home and slept on the futon until my C-section scar healed and I could walk up our notoriously steep stairs. I've bragged about its build date being 1890 and our possession of the whole historical record of ownership, yellowed pages with old-fashioned handwriting. We're a little blip here, and there, aren't we? We've got here for just a while longer, and this may be my last August as a resident. Who knows what the future might hold!
