Safe Place

About 4 years ago when my husband and I moved to Aurora, we learned that despite our best efforts, unpacking was a relative term. We're still finding things to unpack or put on the walls. We plead "children".

On stock photography sites, if you look up the words "moving day", they'll show images of a young married couple moving to their first house. The couple will look happy, they'll be surrounded by corrugated boxes that will be labeled "living room" and they'll be sitting on a gleaming hardwood floor eating Chinese food. To me this is Moving Day pornography; it doesn't exist and should not be viewed at all. It's all a tease.

For us, unpacking from moving day was so ugly that we'll probably never move from this house, even if we have octuplets and need 7 extra bedrooms; we'll stay. The most memorable of unpacking boxes was the box which I tattooed "UNPACK THIS FIRST" with great big Sharpie letters. It contained toiletries for our first day of life in Aurora, including towels and some other essentials.

Upon arriving we learned very quickly that the "UNPACK THIS FIRST" box was already settling in nicely somewhere in the three levels of our house. Where it was was anyone's guess.

We took our first showers and used paper towels to dry off. If you can imagine what it's like to shower and then engage an entire roll of Bounty to absorb the effects, you'll question whether it's truly the "quicker picker upper". I was really ticked because it was the "one thing" that I remember doing right in our move. "If all else fails, at least we'll have that first box," I comforted myself.

In retrospect it was humorous and somewhat embarrassing; we never talk about it. It's like one of those occasions where you say, "Remember when..." and then the other person knows instantly what you're talking about and says, "Yeah" so quickly that you know they don't want to remember any of it. It's like that. Exactly.

In the weeks that followed, whenever my husband asked where something was I said, "I don't know where it is, but I know it's somewhere safe." I must have said that 324,765 times because to this day I continue to say it to myself. Plus, studies show that if you repeat something 324,765 times, it becomes habit.

"Where is my toothpaste," I queried upon opening my empty bath drawer. "Wherever it is, it's somewhere safe." And sure enough... there it was... picked up and given a new home by one of my helpers.

"Where is all my gum?"

"Where is my hairbrush?"

"Why can't I find my other shoe?"

"Has anyone seen my sunglasses? My cell phone?"

Safe place, safe place, safe place.

I worry 80% less now that I'm a mother because I know that if I pretend I don't really want to find the item that is lost, it will start to feel badly and resurface momentarily.

This morning I placed two clear rubber hair ties on the kitchen table in order to put pigtails in Eve's hair. Within seconds they vanished. I learned that Eve placed both holders in her cereal bowl and they were receiving a milk bath. See? Safe place.

My headbands are gone and a really cute second grader has surfaced wearing one of them.
Safe place.

My coffee mug has been missing since a very handsome man has deemed it worthy of his attention. Safe place again.

What's more, with so much sharing, things collect very little dust in our house. It's win-win.

So come on over. Bring your children, your pets, your in-laws. We're not sure what you came with, but we're sure that whatever you leave with will be relatively close to the same number you arrived with.

And if you leave things here, rest assured: They're safe.