Our possessions arrived in a deluge-it has been raining here for a week, and is to rain a week more. With a swoosh Kungsholm Movers came down our lane, a bright yellow and blue Swedish moving truck filled with moved Swedish things. When at last the doors opened, I felt they were as St. Peter at the gates-there they were, guarding a holy treasure, only the things they guarded had no real monetary value at all.

We had opted to not take insurance because if the boat sank, how can you put a price on a blue and green vase that you made yourself in Skansen? How do you describe a blue hanging candle you bought in a market in Turkey, and how the hell do you tell them that the childhood book you had, the one you insisted on having read to you every night, the last copy you could find in hardbound, is gone?

The boxes arrived, and as I wrapped my hands around the strong frame of my rocking chair and carried it in, I felt like laughing in the rain. As I tore boxes apart to find my silver box, I nearly cried with relief when I found it. I withdrew it and asked Angus if he wanted or needed to look in it-he said he didn't, and so it has gone back into another box to be stored inside. I didn't open it.

I don't need to.

Opening my boxes of books I felt like I was re-uniting with lost lovers. Griffin and Sabine, I missed you. Vikram Seth, may we never part again. A.S. Byatt, let's have tea. We have to build bookshelves in our study, which is currently unfinished, so for now they remain boxed and holding up our many framed prints which need to go on the walls.

Angus was also wrapped in memories (as well as more power tools than even the New Yankee has, or as Angus calls him, the Damn Yankee). His boxes go further back than mine, and have something more of a scent of the 80's on them, a time of loud music and louder clothes. I'm a decade younger, and in being younger, my claim is of a different generation. He gets the 80's, that time of St. Elmo's Fire and everything tinged with a taste of Duran Duran and the Talking Heads. While I'd like to steal The Breakfeast Club, the 90's were more about Men in Black and, on the cusp, Say Anything, all aired with a twinge of REM and They Might Be Giants.

Every box had to be sanitized. I've found many picture frames packed with pictures I never want to see again, but at the same time, I never want to lose them (a strange dichotomy in my life filled with dichotomies). A few have been thrown away. One got ripped on accident, and then ripped again on purpose. There are now two boxes which I plan on simply sealing and keeping in the attic, as I don't want to lose them but I don't want to look at them. They contain things like love letters, a wedding dress, and photo albums.

It was asked about my Ex-Partner Unit, and the truth is-we don't talk. We don't talk because he avoids me like the plague, and I don't blame him. He has moved himself out to China, sold everything, and now is working on a new life. He hates me, I think, and I understand that. If I were him I'd hate me, too. I'm not even him and I often hate me. He had the keys to my storage unit, where he dropped a few things off that apparently he didn't want reminding of-the Lladro wedding figurine we have, the former wedding cake topper, a few appliances. He used the same route I usually do-get rid of it fast before it hurts too much.

It was also mentioned yesterday the feeling of being a nomad, and this feeling is one I understand completely. Ironically, I have a book that's lazing around my hard drive, which I titled "Nomads" (which I doubt will ever see the light of day) about exactly that-the moving, the trying to find your way home. My whole life has been that of a laconic gypsy, the moves either military-imposed or self-imposed. My therapist says that one re-creates what they grew up with because that's what they know, that's what's "comfortable", (even if the comfort level is equal to laying on a bed of nails). So move around I did, a self-imposed exile of forwarding addresses and hazy memories of too many formica kitchen counter-tops. Moving is like running-you can do it and escape your problems, but you'll only get new ones.

And I'm done with moving.

This is my stake in the ground, and it only took 32 years to do it.

The boxes were wonderful-Angus unpacked in the kitchen and I took on the study and there were many exclamations of "Oh my God, you have to see this!" as we unwrapped our wrapped lives and wanted to show them off.

There were many things I had forgotten about-a plastic green frog which used to grace the bathroom of my home I owned alone in Dallas (and which I loved). A garden table my mother bought for me years ago, and which I still adore. The handmade cape I bought in Venice, for Canivale. Sweaters (Jesus. H. Christ. I have a lot of sweaters, a throwback to those Swedish tundra winters.) A hand-painted Japanese bowl with a maple leaf motif. An original Hummel music box given to me as a gift by a friend of my parents who passed away many years ago.

And then I found the gorgeous quilt that my grandmother had hand-sewn for me, before her arthritis took over and it got too hard. It was the last quilt she ever made and I love it unreservedly. We're debating having it hung on the wall, because I don't want anything to happen to it.

There was a blue and green vase, hand-blown in Sweden. It was the first thing I ever bought in Sweden, on my very first trip there. It is heavy as hell but, to me, remarkably beautiful and something I can't believe someone could make. It now resides next to a crazy vase I bought in New Zealand, one which makes me think of Dr. Seuss and laughter and sunnier days.

I found my packet of pictures I have of my previous generations. More wedding photos of my grandma and grandpa. Some pictures of my great-grandpa, though sadly none of my beloved great-grandma. And I found a picture of my grandpa, the one I still miss, and I stuck it in a frame and placed it in our living room, next to a print we have of the London underground in the 40's.

And finally, the rocking chair. One of the rockers is still broken, but we have woodworking class tonight and the instructor-a retired traditional cabinet maker-is keen to look at the chair. The chair somehow makes me feel lighter inside, and once it's repaired I know I will sit in that damn thing all the time.

Here's a picture (ignore the laundry hanging in the background because again, it just won't stop fucking raining).

Loads of boxes are flung all over the house. The kitchen looks like the cupboards have exploded. I am missing a few things-a plate from Greece, a bowl from Israel, and tiny tea-light candles in the shapes of a lotus seem to be missing-but if those things are all that's missing, I can live with that. These are our things. Our things are here, and I have missed them.

-H.

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