Once More, Again

A friend of mine recently sent a note, in response to my social media “update” that I’d be moving back to Charleston, SC (from Birmingham, AL). He heralded an appropriate new nickname for me, inspired by my recent life activity: “I guess we’ll now have to call you Whiplash", he teased.

I can’t hate it. In fact, I sort of relish the moniker a tad, and mostly because it affirms that I have community in my life that knows and understands me, and gently (with thoughtful timing) employs the effort to crack an endearing joke at my expense. I don’t hate it, no, but I have been thinking about it quite a lot.

Five weeks ago I moved back to Charleston. This is my third time to relocate here, twice from the city where my heart lives (Birmingham, I love you forever and ever, amen). I am tired. I am unorganized. I am, indeed, whiplashed.

Why all the moving? Gosh, that’s complicated. I’ve literally pinged and ponged between two places no less than four times in the span of just seven years. (As is what I find to be true about most of life’s happenings—I did not plan any of this.)

I’m mostly settled in to my new home here, a fourth floor apartment in an exploding nook of Charleston. I am surrounded by youthful tenants who have not been singed by the inferno of complexities maturing adulthood tends to bring. (On weekend nights, find me enjoying a lush Pinot Noir from my balcony while I watch the parade of Ubers and Lyfts roll through as they pick up lavishly tan and well-dressed 20-somethings on their way to a long night out—it’s better than Bravo, y’all.) If you had asked me a year ago if I’d end up here, I would have begged you to hush with your silly nonsense. Then again, I now have a trash fairy who comes and picks up the trash outside of my front door every night and so now I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to leave this place.

The most recent chapter of my life has been less about planting roots and more about responding to an inhospitable host of curve balls thrown towards me by a pandemic, an ex-husband, and all the other fun things that have made 2020-2022 such a delightful experience. To be surrounded by young, ripe, barely-adults is turning out to be richly entertaining, refreshing, and only mildly annoying (I’m finding we cannot have nice things here because my neighbors sometimes assume somebody else will come and clean up after them, and experience tells me that I do not need to clean up other people’s messes, full stop).

Here I am. Today. On this early September morning. Sitting on my little balcony, basking in the lingering heat of summer (a heat that realistically will not dissipate until November—it’s Charleston, after all). As has been the case so many times before, I have fallen out of my regular practice of writing (though my journalling has sustained), and nearly every week I’m greeted by a friend or acquaintance that says to me something to the effect of keep writing, LK, so I can keep reading. And so, YES—that is exactly what feels right and good, right now. I may give you a neck strain while you catch up on the haggardly held happenings of my life, but I guarantee you that there are silver linings abundant, enough to soothe any aches that may arise as you attempt to follow along.

I remember saying to a colleague, not longer after moving back to Charleston (a second time) back in 2015, you really can’t RETURN to a place. At the time I was devastated about how poorly I’d planned for the emotional uprooting from one place I’d grown to love so deeply, while also navigating such a hefty move with completely naiveté to just how much life had changed in the place I was returning to (after nearly six years). Seasons change things. So yes, we cannot simply return—we must arrive anew, in a manner that allows us to inhabit a place once more, again.

I genuinely appreciate experience. Hell, that’s what I do for a living. And if time has given me anything it is the wisdom of this: Life is not happening to us; it’s happening for us. (Somebody else said that, fyi. I cannot recall who, but that is not my original thought.) There is good reason my life is unfolding in this manner and far be it from me to question timing or the nature of things. (Although, let’s be real—I question it all.)

The whiplash felt from the last few years of my story is legitimate. The root (or, perhaps more apropos, unrooting) of such turbulence has kept me from some of the things I love most: socializing…relaxing…indulging in routine…writing about it all. And today, this morning, here on this little balcony, the dexterity that comes with stability is whispering all sorts of things…and what I hear most clearly is this: be still, enjoy where you’ve landed, write all about it.

Reflecting…

Mind
Messy and congested. The threat of catching COVID finally caught up with me three weeks ago and my first bout took me out, to the point that I’m still feeling its sticky fingers on my sinuses. There are also piles everywhere in my home—things to organize, things to unpack, things to put away. I’ve misplaced everything, most notably the stack of books that I’d been reading prior to my ping pong back to Charleston. I’d been munching on a lovely Benjamin Franklin biography, as well as a collection of Alan Watts and another of the Stoics—none of which I can currently find. (Being without my books is, to me, the greatest iteration of torture.)

Yet alas, I have plenty of books, so I decided to dive in to a book that has been atop my stack for several months—a dense and deeply delicious encyclopedia of the physical human expression. Bill Bryson’s The Body is as humorous as it is educational, and it has served as a fine distraction while I work on sorting the tossed about tentacles of a life that has just packed up and moved, started a new job, fought the death swords of Covid, etc.

Body
Oof. The truth is going to hurt, literally. This body is in pain. The compounding aspects of current life circumstances have limited my energy and wherewithal to even attempt strenuous or complicated movement. I mean, for the past two years I’ve spent anywhere from 30-50 hours every month driving on interstates—my hips and spine are pissed. Also of note, the inability to locate the necessary pots and pans and kitchen utensils needed to make a home-cooked meal has been a deterrent to healthy food choices. I can keep on with the excuses, but y’all can already see right through it—when LK isn’t moving and fueling her body, LK isn’t feeling right.

And yet..

While my physical body is screaming out for mercy, the word GRACE has surfaced as a daily mantra. I’m cutting myself some slack and acknowledging that some pretty big tasks have taken priority and, as soon as I start moving this gorgeous, glorious body with intention and strength, the sooner I’ll be feeling more like the LK I like to be. Once more, again.

Spirit
If you are new to my ramblings, this may not land as something significant, though to you who have even been so close to hold my hand through the last few years, you will undoubtedly understand…

Yesterday I had three meals at home with my darling sons. (Let the record show with enthusiastic jubilee that all three of those meals were home-cooked, which is evidence that I am well on my way to settling in and healing from the whiplash of moving. Huzzah!)

Yesterday my boys and I sat together at our little table and we ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In between meals we did this and that, and at no point during the day were we pressed to get on the road and travel seven hours. There was not even a spec of this time is limited permeating the normalcy of our completely normal day. I cooked. They washed dishes. We said the blessing. We talked about cars and school and friends. We had ice cream after dinner and finished a movie we’d started the night before. We were completely together without any threat of being apart—and that was absolute bliss.

Clearly, I do have whiplash. I have rightfully earned such a nickname. And guess what—I’m immeasurably grateful to have it. I was given the opportunity to experience loss. The agony of being pulled in many directions (specifically, being pulled from my children) was a heart-conditioning (if not cruel) exercise that would mold my resolve into a steel-coated force of fury. The woman (and mother) I am today has been significantly informed by the events and experiences of just the last few years. I’ve been yanked, tousled, gut-punched, tripped, and tangled through a season of suffering that I very much chose to endure. My path of uncertainty and upheaval was in many ways a result of my own choices and also a means for me to fully appreciate and understand the gifts that perhaps I may have otherwise taken for granted. My neck aches with the desire to look back at the places I left (that I dearly loved) while I also stretch as far forward as I can to see what lies ahead.

Here’s to the ache, and with it, the full expression of love.

x,
lk

Photo: My darling Dean and our Luna watching the sun set over our new-to-us neighborhood, August 2022