Like all change, moving dredges up strong, often startling emotions: confusion, fear, anger (one spouse is usually less in favor or downright hostile). You give up a familiar structure, and, like a lobster shedding its shell, you are left naked and vulnerable for a time. But I’ve come to believe that we need to shed old shells before they become confining.
By the time Clay and I were ready to move in together for good, we were also ready to adopt a child. And, oh yes,we finally got married. I was in my forties, he in his fifties, and we had entered our settling-down stage. Clay did a massive renovation of that imposing co-op—and “discovered” the kitchen he hadn’t used for 25 years. The political dinner-table conversations with our worldly wise, teenaged Cambodian daughter were sublime.
Seven years later, we faced another move. When Clay was diagnosed with an indolent form of a potentially serious disease, an intuitive doctor suggested that his professional life and our now empty nest weren’t helping him fight the illness. “Open the door to a new life,” he advised us. “You need to make a commitment between the two of you—think about how to find that door every day, just as you would ask, ‘What am I going to wear today?’ Just struggling with the question tells your immune system: I am so important, I am worth fighting for.”