We had expected this move when my husband accepted a job here. Signing the papers at the loan officer's desk made it real. We were leaving our country home of 17 years to move to a small town in another state.

Our children were more sad than excited. They cried and raged. They would miss their friends, their rooms, the woods. They would miss their schools, the stores, the familiar routes down winding roads. I understood. I would miss them, too.

We embarked on a frenzy of memory collecting. I wandered the yard with my camera, focusing on the poplars swaying in the sunlight against the bright blue sky, knowing as I did that 35 mm film would never catch the sound of wind in the trees, the scent of moss and damp dirt underfoot.

I took pictures of each room, realizing as I did that the finished photographs would show the clutter and the little crack in the window, but not the warmth of the sun's reflection. I remembered the first year that we lived in this house-the sun, the snow, a fire in the woodstove, my mother baking, my husband coming home, our first daughter asleep on her furry blue blanket.

How could I leave the sparkling creek, the blue jays screeching in the trees, the deer sauntering by my window? How could I leave the poplars raining yellow leaves into the yard each fall and the moon sailing across the night sky between the fir trees?

The children had many fears, logical and illogical. Would they make new friends? Would their old friends forget them? How would the new school be? Would they get lost? Would they be cheeseheads now?

I had my own fears. I remembered moves early in our marriage, awakening in a strange room and staring at the patch of light. Was it a doorway or a window? Where was I? How did the rooms lie outside the door? My sleep was disoriented for weeks, until the rooms became familiar, and I could once again find my way in the dark.

Movers came and crated up box after box of our belongings. It was embarrassing to have other people see the depths of the closet, the dust behind the dresser. As rooms emptied, they became foreign, seemed to change in size and shape. Our home had become a place to which we couldn't return.

Departure day arrived, bringing neighbors with hugs, gifts, and tears. I called my husband, already in the new house. He eagerly told me of groceries purchased and preparations made. "I'll be waiting for you," he promised. "Hurry!"

We drove through the summer evening. When we walked into our new home, he hugged us all. In his arms, I felt a sense of homecoming. The house seemed welcoming, too, perhaps because it had been built at the same time as my grandparents' homes. The dark stained doors and woodwork brought me back to the security of those times.

Each day, we found something new. Somehow, when we planned to move, we had imagined moving into a void. We had only thought of what we were leaving behind. But there was no void.

Instead, we found roses blooming outside the back door. Red hollyhocks. A sugar maple that would dance colored leaves across the lawn in fall. Mourning doves. A blue jay screaming from the mountain ash tree. The moon rising in one neighbor's pines and setting in another's maple tree. The kids adjusted. Sure, they still miss their old friends, and phone calls and letters are poor substitutes. But they did make new friends. They like school, and wear their Vikings jerseys, teasing the rabid Packer backers who tease them back.

Life in a small town is similar to the way it was when I was growing up in Ely. The neighbors still watch out for your house and kids. Locals are pleasant, but slow to befriend newcomers. The friendliest people are those who have moved themselves.

I learned that mourning our losses when we move is much like mourning a death: It takes a full year's cycle to complete the process. Already, the girls know that they can catch fireflies here, lie in the yard watching the stars change overhead, and where the best place is for watching the Fourth of July fireworks. Next fall, someone will say, "We always hang the Halloween ghosts from the front porch railings." What is new and strange will have become routine.

Recently, a woman who used to own this house visited. She noticed that the wallpaper border she'd put up in the dining room was gone, but the curtains were the same. Her voice softened as she told me how her family had dug the birch tree out of her parents' property and planted it here. "It was as tall as me," she said. "But look how big it is now!"

She showed me the plant with reddish berries growing among the grapevine on the fence. It would be ready to pick when the outer husks swelled and burst.

Then she told me its name - bittersweet. MM

Susan Niemela Vollmer lives in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.
 

This article appeared as "Moving Home" in the April, 1998 issue of Minnesota Monthly. Copyright Minnesota Monthly.