Transitions? Closing Time.

I'm so slow.

My wonderfully intuitive cousin Lori shared one of her posts with me, marking the transition of her beautiful daughter to a new stage in life.  The post included a couple photos of Tessa, conscious of being on a threshold and meeting what comes next with joy.  It's wonderful to see the freedom that radiates from her.

Lori ended with an invitation to share our own transitions.  And a music video for the song by Semisonic, "Closing Time."

It was when I started packing that I realized that I do, too, have a transition to share.

We are exactly four years along in the living-separately phase of the divorce.  Making it official is coming r-e-a-l-l-y slowly, duh, but it is coming.  I only just got around to attending the divorce parenting class mandated by our county.  In one of the mercifully few break-into-groups moments one woman said incredulously to me:  "Wait a minute!  You've been in this divorce process for 4 years??? (I've been rereading an old diary, from 2008, when I first acknowledged to myself that it was going to happen.  Then there were at least 2 years ahead of that where I was trying to decide what would be the best course of action.  So, this has been a real slo-mo divorce.)

This may be the last time I stay in the apartment.  In the four years we've done a lot of tweaking of the schedule where the parents have been the ones switching back and forth.  It's gotten old, but the apartment is too small for the boys to stay for a week.  And the rents have gone up so it now costs more than our home mortgage.

A few months ago I was fed up ready and said it was time for him to find a place that would be his.  It was no longer working for us to share the house.  I was tired of coming home to find I was having to step around and move his stuff in order to live.  I'm tired of him operating his business from there, so that even when the house is "mine", he's still in it, working.

Gary has found a place that he can afford that is big enough for the kids to live with him.   He can have his business there.  It's a houseboat at a moorage on one of the islands in the middle of the Columbia.  He's given notice at the apartment and wants to be out by next week.  Since the schedule we've stabilized into had me here every other weekend, it looks like I'm at Closing Time too.

As I pack to leave I'm taking out a heavier load--the extra clothes I've kept in drawers, a number of my books, my toiletries.  I'll be at the house full time now; the boys with me one week, and with Gary the other.  No more packing and moving every other week.  We may have to do some more schedule-tweaking.  Logistics are going to be different.  The apartment is only about 10 blocks away from Connor's school, and it's in the heart of uptown with ready access to public transportation.  That's not easy to give up.

So big changes are afoot, but it's time to get to that other shoe.  Get divorced, already.  Get it done.