Moving on my Birthday

So, today is my 33rd birthday. It is not, however, the only time I have ever moved on my birthday.

Back in 1984, my family moved from California to Virginia so my dad could take a promotion. I remember goofy bits of the move like helping my mom pack our stuff, how much my dad was gone (he started the job six months before we moved—which I realize now was done so we could finish the school year) and the long, boring drive across the entire country.

I remember when we began the drive, I could hear the stadium announcements of the last game of the season for our local AA affiliate. The stadium was right down the street from us, and we drove past it on our way out. With dad gone most of the summer (the move took forever in the end...we had trouble finding a house and then we couldn't get into it until September) the three of us went to every single baseball game that season. Some of the players knew me by name. Especially the relief pitchers, as I tended to hang out with a gang of kids who spent a lot of time in the metal bleachers near where the relief pitchers sat in their folding metal chairs, waiting to be called to warm up. One of them used to sneak me baseballs when he could. They were ususally old and scuffed and probably would have been thrown away if he hadn't given them to me, but the biggest fit I pitched during the move was probably when my mom told me I could only pack one or two and that I should give the rest of them away to the other kids.

So yes, although I spent most of my youth uninterested in watching or playing sports, I did spend one glorious, odd summer at a minor league baseball park. For every single game but the very last one, that is. That one, I heard one of the players ground out to the shortstop as we rolled by the stadium in the car.

That was probably six days before my birthday. It took us five days to drive across the country. We only drove about six or seven hours a day. My mother had a set of AAA Triptiks with each day's route planned out and hotel reservations in each town we were to stop in. I remember the moment that I did the calendar math in my head and I realized that we would be arriving in Virginia on September 10th and that I would be starting school the next day.

On my birthday.

First day in a new school, first day in middle school. All of which would come, rather miserably, on the one holiday a year that belonged only to me.

Well, I survived it, obviously. I don't even remember it being all that bad in the end, as I met the two people that day who I would be friends with for the next several years, and they accepted me into the group at their lunch table that very first day. We were still staying in the apartment my father had rented, waiting for our things to show up on the moving truck, but we went out to dinner for my birthday and there was a cake hidden in one of the cabinets when we got back. It really wasn't so bad at all.

Finally, as we turn our attention back to 2005, I hope the same will be true this time. I probably wouldn't choose to spend my 33rd birthday in a car for more than a dozen hours, pregnant, and cramped because of all the stuff we have to cram somewhere in the car. I certainly wouldn't choose to spend it with my poor cats locked in a cage in the back seat of that car, making the most pathetic and wretched noises that make me wish I could snap my fingers and they'd be safely in Archtown.

We joked last night about taking a picture of them in the cage and posting it to one of our blogs with the caption, "Because of you, WH, we are locked in this cage. Thanks." It was funny at the time, I promise.

However, like I've been saying to myself over and over for the past week or so, things may be complicated for us right now, they may be stressful and they may be rather labor-intensive. The one constant is that the minute hand keeps making dizzy circles past all twelve numbers and that hour hand keeps crawling along too. No matter what happens, as long as we get the big stuff taken care of, the time will tick by and we will put this all behind us. I will, sooner rather than later, be 33 years and one day old, and time will continue to march on.