There is a huge house on the way to Tate's school, and I mean it is huge. It's all manicured with gorgeous landscaping and it has a fountain right out front. When we first moved here it was winter and the fountain was a big frozen ice sculpture every day as I brought Turner and Tate to school. This sparked many conversations in our car. The kids would cheer and scream every morning as we passed the fountain, it just looked so cool with ice sickles exploding from it.
Turner now gets dropped off at his school and doesn't get to view the fountain every day anymore, but Tate gives daily reports. She knows when the house is coming up, and talks to me every morning about if she thinks it will be frozen, flowing, or broken. We've discussed how water freezes, what we think the family is like who lives in the big huge fountain house, and Turner has even told me he doesn't want to live in a house that big because I would take all day to clean it and wouldn't be able to play.
As we drove by the fountain this week I got sad thinking about not seeing the fountain any more. Every time we move my kids manage to begin making their own rituals to make a new place feel familiar, the fountain was a big one here in Macon. In Cartersville is was a little gas station/BBQ joint with an ever evolving garage sale out front. Turner would press his face to the car window and tell me what all new junk was at the BBQ emporium.
Routine is king at our house. I think it's my futile attempt to bring stability in to a very unstable life. If my kids know what to expect every day they are happy, and feel secure. They will never know what it feels like to grow up in the same house their entire life. I try to remember to take a picture of the outside of each house we have lived in and keep it. One day I'll put them all in a photo book and give one each to the kids. My memories are of the same house my parents still live in. I go home and it's still home. My kids won't have that but I'm trying to make sure the feeling of "home" is right where we are at the moment. So far Turner B. has five different houses in his home file, Tater has three. When I write that down it sounds awful, like we do nothing but pack and move. But each of the houses is so packed full of time spent, dinners eaten together, night lights in hallways, familiar smells, Christmas mornings, and so many other memories that I barely remember the houses themselves. My memories of my past ten years aren't a fractured and scattered collection, but a cohesive span where only the background scenery changes.
I've already started talking with the kids about moving. I don't hide anything from them or sugar coat it. They know we'll be leaving here some time next year, they know it's going to suck. I think they also know that we will get through it. We've started adding things in our morning prayers asking God to start getting a house ready for us in the next town. I ask for God to get our hearts ready to meet new people and not hurt too badly for the ones we have to leave. I'm hoping since the kids are older that they will have lots of contact with their friends through my email, Skype and on my Facebook. Maybe it'll help, it helps me anyway.
Tate wanted to know if there would be a fountain in our next town that we could talk about. I told her I don't know, but that we would find other things to drive by everyday and talk about. Maybe I'll start adding a fountain to our prayers. It is very surprising what little things my kids will get attached to. Junky roadside gas stations and fountains in other people's driveways. But I will search for the next roadside interest and try to make our next house and routines feel like home, even if it means driving out of my way to look for a new fountain.
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