Mom came to visit me over the Mother's Day weekend, and it was a great visit, one of the best of all time. (I would even go as far as to say it surpassed Dad Visits and We Go to a Wedding, Part One and tied Subcontinent and Sir U von L Honorary St. Patty's Day and Architecture Boat Tour Extravaganza.) But it was a long time ago now and I've had a couple more visitors since then. Next weekend, I'll have my last visitor to this apartment. Appropriately, it's going to be CC, college roommate extraordinaire.
Last visitor to this apartment, you say? Why yes. On August 1st, I'm moving on to bigger and better things in the form of a one bedroom a stone's throw from here. In one of the best coincidences so far, it will be on the same street as where my aunt lived when she first lived in Chicago, two blocks down.
This is the seventh summer in a row that I've moved. The first five times (moving to college, and then moving back and forth between home and new dorm rooms) were carried out under my own steam and I got so good at it that by the end I was turning down help and packing up my car with scientific precision as my parents (absent for the three previous departures) looking on, impressed, and held my diploma.
Last summer, I wasn't moving myself, and it was the trickiest move of all. In 108 degree heat, I helped my parents move into their new house in Lawrence, Kansas. It was the hardest move, but it was also the best, because the payoff was the greatest. When we hung the corn painting above their fireplace and it instantly fit, I could tell they'd found a great new home.
So last summer I didn't actually move myself. There was no way I was moving apartments in the same month as I was helping my parents move houses. Nonetheless, I was getting sicker and sicker of living in a studio (especially with visitors, no matter how beloved, and especially in winter).
The move this summer is going to be hectic. (It falls at the end of our yearly trip to Colorado.) It's going to be hot. (See: August 1st. Also it's a third floor walk-up.) But, it's going to be worth it.
