I don’t even know where to start.
I don’t even know where I started.
Maybe with throwing away what I had forgotten in the fridge—expired milk, yogurt, that jar of pesto left open for too long.
I knew it, everyone had told me, but I had to experience it myself. Moving can be incredibly stressful, and it’s often listed as one of the three hardest events in life, along with losing a loved one and separation. Not exactly small things.
Mine was a “half move”—a little over four months living in a temporary house while mine was being renovated.
I have vivid images: the emptied house and my last meals sitting on the floor,
bags of sorted recycling from decluttering, mostly paper and plastic, and a few tears that slipped out. So many things that pile up in twenty years of life.
To-do lists everywhere: on my phone, on sticky notes attached to the bathroom mirror, on random scraps of paper I slipped into my handbag because a thought came to mind and I jotted it down right there, maybe on a café receipt.
The smell of my home kept changing, depending on which craftsman was working inside.
At first, it felt like a punch in the stomach, then slowly something started to take shape—or maybe it was the light that came first. Yes, a different kind of brightness. And finally, it arrived: a brand-new sofa, an emerald green velvet caress that brought hope. An anchor in the middle of the sea, soft like a cloud, a cuddle to finally lie down and rest a little. Easy to assemble, easy to live with, easy to match with the rest of the house.
They say good things take time.
Minu ga hana (見ぬが花):
“Not seeing is a flower.” Because sometimes the waiting or the imagination of something can be more beautiful than its reality.
