Make Like a Tree and

When the leaves are all gone, it’ll be time to make like a tree and leaf ourselves. Sorry. It’s peak moving stress time and my brain is all gone.

I took a break from peak pre-move sorting stress (pack the express shipment! Put stuff on the free “a donner” table in the front yard! Where’s the cat paperwork! Pack the jewelry and currency! Put the kids’ birth certificates back in the Important Documents Binder and put it in the hand-carry luggage! Where are our new passports? Where are the old ones? Where are the tourist ones? Register the kids for school! Where are their immunization records? Do a walk through with the cleaning crew! Do a walk through with the real estate person who is annoyed you can’t have your house staged for photos the day the packers are crating the stuff going to Japan! Do a walk through for that shipment where the expert tells you to put half your things in storage for two years and that absolutely everything must be separated before they arrive! Condense a five-bedroom house with a yard to a three-bedroom apartment! Argue about everything! Don’t pack the Halloween costumes! Make sure you are tracking all the end of soccer festivities and games! Make sure you are tracking spirit week the same week the packers and movers come! Make sure you are tracking class parties and birthday parties! Don’t forget about Parent Teacher conferences the morning of the day you fly out for your last European adventure! Did you book those train tickets yet? What do you mean the pet-friendly hotel doesn’t allow pets or children? Did you hear from the JAG about the security clearance thing? You have another hail and farewell? Let’s argue about the storage shipment some more!).

Chris and I are bad at lots of stuff, but here’s one thing we’re good at: moving! But this move has been the worst ever. Belgian rentals are really different. I’ve heard residents refer to it as the “moving mafia,” where you’re required to pay hundreds of euros for a third party to inspect the home, then you get charged for wear and tear and literally every little thing. People often get fined THOUSANDS. It’s all the worst parts of selling a house and turning a rental back over at the same time.

Then there’s the downsizing. I’m kind of a maximalist but I absolutely do not mind downsizing; we ditched at least 30 percent of our stuff when we moved to Hawaii, but I figured, “Heck, I could stay here forever! If it doesn’t fit here, I don’t need it!” But then we moved here and our home is twice as big but with zero closets, so we had to buy shelves, closets, etc. We have not lived in an apartment since 2008. Now we are going to an apartment half the size of this house for a short 24 month tour and I don’t feel like it’s worth it to get rid of everything just to turn around and (probably) have a bigger place again two years from now. So who cares, just put half of it in storage, easy, right? Well not for SOME people, who are super grumpy about the entire process and making it stressful and difficult for everyone who doesn’t want to end up with an armchair in the middle of the kitchen. Ah HEM. Anyway, there is disagreement.

So after lunch and packing one suitcase with clothes for the next five months I took a hike. I rode a lime scooter to the edge of the woods and tromped through it, found my favorite autumn spot in the middle of nowhere in the Sonian Forest, followed a little stream from its source to the 12th Century abbey Rouge Cloitre, admired the geese, chickens, horses, and adorable fat goats, then got lost trying to get out of the woods, turned in a circle, found my way, hopped on another lime and zipped home with 20 minutes to spare before the bus came.

I love the spicy-sweet smell of the woods. It’s unseasonably warm—nearly 70 degrees today!—but the breeze in the treetops shook loose lots of leaves from time to time. Some swirled down in lazy circles. Some drifted down, back and forth. Some just fell. One fell on me, slipping right over my heart. Piles of leaves blew across the path and into the pond. I startled a huge toad, who startled me back. Mutual surprise.

I thought about that one spot on the Pali Highway going over the mountains in Hawaii where you can roll your window down to smell that same spicy forest smell. I thought about hiking through the mountains in Kamakura, near where we’ll be in Japan in 2.5 months, and descending down the mountain through layers of color from the changing leaves, red to orange to gold to green. I thought about living near the ocean again, and I thought about my brother Luke asking me a few days ago whether I still love fall in Belgium. Right now fall is about the ONLY thing I like about Belgium (just kidding sort of).

Riding my bike to French class the past two autumns is one of my favorite things about living here, as is going to the farmers market this time of year and the fall NIC tours, plus autumn wine tasting. The leaves were gorgeous today, and they’ll get prettier and prettier the next several weeks, here to enjoy next time I need a break from moving.

And when the leaves are gone, we will be too. Hopefully we won’t leave a bunch of junk in the front yard.