Friday and Saturday we spend all day outside in the muggy heat - pressure washing everything that had been stored on the porch, in the shed or in the outside storage room. Monday we have a customs inspection and everything must be free of dirt, spider webs and snails. We put it all on the driveway and back porch and surround it with a thick line of salt.
While emptying the storage room, Geoffrey remarks, "I've learned something from this move. I need to stop trying to make every house we live in into a homestead." Bwa Ha Ha Ha!! If you knew how many pre-moves I have spent suggesting, begging and encouraging him to get rid of his stuff you would understand how funny this was. I try to contain my laughter long enough to give him a hug and tell him that I am proud of his epiphany.
In Geoffrey's heart of hearts, he would like to live on a farm with large animals and a big garden and a huge workshop. He would have every tool and keep everything that might be useful again someday. He would spend hours teaching his children the many practical skills he knows. He would be prepared for any type of apocalypse the world could throw at him. It kills him that he can't be that dad.
Three hours after that admission, he took the oldest two boys boar hunting with a Turkish friend named Mustafa. At 1:30 am in the Tarsus Mountains near Pozanti, his sons shot a boar. He teaches them how to gut the beast and they spend the night with their friend, coming home the next morning with coolers of meat, puffed out chests and big cheesy grins.
Saturday evening after the boys left Delaney is sitting at the computer planning the menu and shopping list for her birthday dinner the next day. We have been too busy to do this before but the commissary is open for another two hours so we can still make it. She is singing along to a Montgomery Gentry song.
Yeah, this is my town.
Where I was born
Where I was raised
Where I keep all my yesterdays.
This kills me a little. This proud, grounding sentiment won't ever apply to her. When someone asks my children where they are from they hesitate and look at me for the answer. Where are we from? It should be an easy question to answer but it's not. They have no hometown. Their identities are not tied to one place of permanence but to many places of experience.
Sunday morning Evan and Rory wait with me in the kitchen for the breakfast cake to finish baking. They woke me this morning determined to keep up the birthday-breakfast-in-bed tradition for their older sister. Evan talks about the move.
"The bad thing about moving is having to unpack everything again and again.
But it would get really boring to stay in the same house your whole life in the same town."
(Pause)
"I'm really glad we got to live in Turkey."
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