that one week after I get back from Camino, I am moving
from a house I had owned for the last 20 years!
What is kind of amusing to me is the thought that I have logged far more miles since I’ve returned from Camino than I ever did in the period when I felt I was vigorously training for the Camino. Yet it feels as though all this walking and hiking has taken little if any effort. In comparison, the training hikes seemed so grueling, mentally and physically. I credit this change not just to better fitness but to the new and exhilarating lifestyle I began to live almost immediately after the Camino. It all started with a move the week after I got back!
My second husband died in July 2003. Shortly after his death, I was visiting a friend who lives in Collingswood and totally fell in love with the town. It’s truly a unique and special place and was recently written up in the New York Times. I'll let them tell you about Collingswood, here’s the link:
Anyway, as eager as I was to finally escape the doldrums of suburbia, I really felt like I should keep the house until my son, who is from my first marriage, graduated from college. At the time my husband died, my son was about to enter his senior year of high school. There was a small life insurance policy that would enable me to hang onto the house for about five years and for that I was very grateful.
With my son set to graduate in August (he needed a few extra classes during the summer due to a change in majors early on), I put the house up for sale on March 2. As bad as the real estate market was at the time, the house sold in two weeks! Turns out it was the right house for the right buyer who came along just at the right time. One of those moments when everything in the universe lines up just right. Maybe it was meant to be, my reward for hanging in there for my son, despite how miserable I felt living in that town that I had lived in for virtually my entire life in a house that wound up taking every penny I had.
So, in addition to trying to train and shop for Camino, now, I’ve got to pack up and clean out an entire house - not to mention try to find a new place to live. Can I tell you that it was a very stressful time! So many worries, will the buyer back out, will there be a glitch with his mortgage? I lived through gut wrenching home inspections, well tests and termite inspections (always a worry when you live in the woods)! Living in fear that something could go wrong and the deal would fall through.
Still, it was time to start packing. I had no idea how many clothes I had that I never wore until I started going thru the drawers and closets. I’m not a pack rat at all yet I realized I had an incredible amount of junk everywhere, in the garage, the attic, the closets. It was amazing how much stuff I trashed and as I went from room to room, how much more there was to trash.
I wound up keeping only the clothes and shoes that I liked and that fit perfectly. Countless kitchen gadgets, decor things, tools, you name it - if I didn’t use it or have a place for it - out it went. One thing I read often about the Camino is that to walk it, you must lighten your burden, both physically and mentally. This I did with the contents of my house. Later, I would do it with the contents of my backpack!
I think I only did two more long training hikes after the house was sold. I did some walking on my own but nothing significant the entire two months before the Camino. Early on in the moving process, while cleaning out the garage, I dropped a can of nails on my right foot and broke a toe! Not good. I walked around in bedroom slippers for about a week then graduated to a cushy pair of Minnetonka Moccasins. At least the swelling and pain had subsided enough to fit my foot in my boots just in time for Camino!
But I wasn’t sitting idle! My non-working hours were spend working on my move. When I did sit idle, I was searching Craig’s List to find a place to rent. I’ve been a homeowner my entire adult life and had experienced the particular hell of being a woman who had to deal with all the home maintenance, repair and breakdown issues on her own! I was at the point where if something broke, I just wanted to pick up a phone and call somebody. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore.
There were plenty of places to rent in Collingswood. IF you didn’t have a dog. I had two. Even though they are little dogs, dogs they are! I also needed a place with hardwood floors. I can’t stand carpeting! So, that what I thought would be the fun part of the moving process, finding a new place, turned out to be not so much fun at all. Until one night, while going thru Craig’s List one more time, I found my dream place. It was a brick Victorian twin right in downtown Collingswood. It had everything I wanted and more! The landlord wanted to meet me before he would make a decision on the dogs and I guess my "interview" went well because I got the place and was able to take possession on May 1. This was great because I could get the place cleaned and start moving stuff in before I left for Camino on the 22nd.
Still, there was much to get done at the old place but I was spending way too much time at the new place, trying to get it into perfect move in condition for the day I moved in. I was tired. I didn’t know if I would be able to get everything done in time. There was even a time when I thought about bagging the Camino. I remember sitting there one day thinking "I can’t go backpacking in Spain a week before I move. I’ll never get everything done." I got over it though!
During the two months before the Camino, the time I think of as "The Moving Time," I had no social life at all. I felt like I was under house arrest (a feeling that would continue throughout the summer). Other than spending Easter at Karin’s house and attending two cycling team meetings, I never left home, other than to go to work or the grocery store!
But, it all worked out and was worth the sacrifice! When I left for Camino, I knew my new place was completely ready to move in. Anything left to be done at the old place could be done in that final week. What was really cool was that when I was on Camino, I completely forgot about the move. I never thought about it at all until the end of the week, when Ray brought it up! And when I did think about it, it was with optimism. I would finally, after all this time, get to live my dream!
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