R is for Relocation – Pagan Blog Project 2014

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago (just shy of two years, as it happens, though it feels like even less than that) that we moved out of our fourth-floor one-bedroom apartment and into a two-bedroom place in the same building.
It’s funny how things come around again. I moved into this building, less than two months from the beginning of my fifth Seven Year cycle, alone and recently separated. Now, with the same move-in date as before (September 15th), I’ll be moving out again, this time with a wife at my side, ready to begin my sixth Seven Year in a new house.
Yes, you heard me, house.
A rental place opened up down the street – so same neighbourhood, still walking-distance from just about everywhere we might want to go, still close to the vast majority of our friends – for a price that we’re pretty comfortable with. It’ll only be my second time paying utility bills, so I admit I’m kind of bracing for the shock and horror of the heating bills to come (and recognizing that I’m going to have to get used to being – eugh – cold for a lot of months of the year. But just watch me learn how to crochet a rag rug in record time, y’all…), but as a house – rather than an apartment – it comes with its own cold/storage room (the basement) and an unusually large-for-downtown, if shared, back yard where I can readily do container gardening next Summer. There is room enough for my wife’s workshop. Room enough for a dining table in the kitchen. Room enough for a library/office on the second floor that will double as a spare bedroom when we have guests. Room enough to store the canoes and the unicycles, the bicycle and the spare motorcycle parts, indoors without losing the second bedroom to equipment. Even with the nail-biting, stomach-knotting stress of uncertain heating costs and – ye gods – purging and packing before the move (yikes)… I’m still excited about this.
As I said, our move-in date is just a few days shy of the Autumn Equinox. But our official “move out date”, when we stop living in two places at once and the lease on our soon-to-be-former appartment is finished, will be on Hallowe’en. Meaning that – and this is how this post connects with the PBP, if you were wondering – our Samhain ritual will involve welcoming the ancestors (and no small number of People) into our new home. And, yes, probably handing out goodies to trick-or-treaters as well.
 
When your religiosity is rooted in Place, how does relocation affect that connection? (In my case, not tonnes, at least from the PoV of moving all of a block away from where we are now… in terms of cultivation, however… potentially a lot). When you’re a kitchen witch – when your calling, in so far as you (or I) have one, is hearth-tending, land-guardianship, building Family/Phamily in creative ways, and singing the praises of holy Earth and Sky in your own public and private ways – how does relocation effect what you do and how you do it?
 
With this move, my hearth will get a little bit bigger; my garden will, once again, have a place to actually grow (and my pantry, with it). My Altar spaces may get changed around again in a number of ways.
Not so long ago, I was saying how much I wanted (and want) a house. And I think Someone must have been listening, when I wrote it, because – as my lovely wife was speculating this morning – the house we’re about to move into? It probably went on the market the very same day that we saw the For Rent sign on the porch. My wife asked if the Someone in question was one of mine, since her particular Lady (sovereignty notwithstanding) is less hearth-oriented than mine are, and mine are very hearth-oriented indeed. So we’re calling this one a Yes for my Girls. 😉
 
So let’s put it this way:
Thank you, all my gods, for sending us this house in-which to make a home. Thank you, and may we live up to it and make it wonderful. ❤
 
Wish us luck in moving into our new home. 🙂
 
 
TTFN,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.