Billie & Normal

Yesterday we went to interview another child care provider and hit the jackpot. I don’t know how we got so lucky, but, then, these days I don’t have much time to sit around pondering the essentials of fate and fortune. Just gotta roll with it. Interviewing people to help raise your child is freaky-deaky. I’ll say that much. And when it’s the right person, you know it. You know because your stomach isn’t tied up in knots.

Across the street from the daycare provider there was this truck parked, with a nice long trailer attached. The wife, nipper and I walked over, knocked on the door, and said, “’Scuse us. We hate to bother you on a Sunday. But we’re moving in two days and we were sorta wondering if we could give you some money for the use of yr trailer for 2 days, instead of giving it to the U*Haul corporation.” The lady who answered the door said, “It’s my husband’s trailer and I can’t speak for him, but I’m fine with it. We’re going to a Cubs game next weekend and I’d love to be able to get a jersey.” (In her eyes, staring beyond us, suddenly I saw twin Cubs jerseys flickering and dancing.)

We worked it out. Basically, it came down to her and her husband wanting to trust that we still live in a world where people can be free and irie and borrow a trailer without, I dunno, stealing them or destroying them instead. I guess they’ve been burned in the past - so there was some trepidation. We agreed to give them whatever they needed to feel cool about us – names, numbers, a deposit, a signed agreement etc. In the end, though, as always, it was Eleanor who opened up all the doors. “You seem like such nice people…and that Baby Ella of yours is too cute!” It is thus that, on a lazy Sunday, we scored: a cool place for Ella to be while we're at work and a way to make our next move feasible.

So once again we prepare to move (again), for what will hopefully be the last time for a while. I no longer hate moving, for it has at last beaten and broken me. There are no more illusions. I endure it, lean into it, and ask it for mercy. I also drink café au lait while I hatch our moving plan with a ballpoint pen. That is all.