Batman at the yard sale.

Last weekend I had a yard sale.

It took over a week to prepare for it. To rummage through all the stuff I've accumulated over the last seven years and decide what's worth taking and what's ok to give up.

Throughout the process, I marveled at my lack of nostalgia. I ruthlessly threw stuff into the reject pile, feeling a sense of liberation from things, which I am, in general, a big fan of.

However, on the day of the yard sale, as people pawed at what was once mine, deciding whether it might have any value to them, I did get a little heartsick.

Not over the dishes that I've served friends and neighbors on for years or over the gaudy jewelry that I've impressed countless third graders with, but over Fain's stupid toys that I've been tripping over and cursing for years. The Batcave with its real moving elevator and garage for the Batmobile. The dozen Batman action figures, cars, villains, weapons, the list goes on.

Fain didn't have any remorse over selling them to the highest bidder. In fact, he told me I could sell everything in his room except for his computer and a few of his baby toys that he wanted to keep for sentimental purposes. (I didn't sell everything, but he did get a big haul that day.)

But as I watched child after child ooh and ahh over the Batcave (and corresponding Joker toy factory/lair), I got a twist in my stomach. I wanted to yank them all back and shove them back in his room where I would, no doubt, spend the last month of our stay in this little house tripping over them and cursing them, just like in the old days.

I don't know what it is. It just got to me.

Then a young woman came and asked about the Batman assembly gathered on the tablecloth under the tree in my front yard. She told me her daughter loves Batman, and her birthday was coming up, and the young mother was practically buzzing with excitement over the find. She asked the price, and after a moment of hesitation, I sold it cheap...cave, toy factory, heroes, villains, the whole lot...because ultimately I liked the idea that there's a little girl who loves Batman. I can relate to that.

And, honestly, she'll probably get a lot more satisfaction playing with it than I'd get cursing it.

This is where I change topics.

So this is where the posts start to shift from my obsessive yammering on about education to an obsessive yammering on about THE MOVE. (I considered referring to this integral time in my life as THE CHANGE, but since that's also an old-fashioned euphemism for menopause, which I'm not undergoing currently, I felt I should stick with the more specific description.) I'm referring to the move from a small town in rural North Carolina to New Orleans. From being a single mother for seven years to being a married lady.

The move is only a month away. The months from Thanksgiving to Spring Break - those were the months between visits with Jack - seemed to drag by. But the months from Spring Break until June 15th are flying - Back-to-the-Future-burning-tire-marks-in-the-road-flying. They're going so fast that I hardly have time to be nervous. So fast that I really don't even have time to think about it anymore. I'm on auto-pilot...

Except for a few moments every now and then. Like watching a BBC detective drama at night in the quiet of the house after I've locked the child and the cats away, when it occurred to me that all the things that have become familiar to me...my little house, my little routines...are about to change drastically. (But then someone else was murdered in Badger's Drift, so my musings were cut short. Thank you, BBC.)

But wow. I mean. Big change, right? So much change that I don't even think my brain can process it.

So I'm going to shift right now into using-composition-to-attempt-to-process-change-mode.

The two choices you get in life

Even though I rail against an educational system that depicts life as a series of multiple choice problems with very limited actual choices, in reality, there are always only two choices in life at any given moment - continue on as I am or choose something different. Either way - whether I choose the security of where I am or the uncertainty of where I might be - there are risks, I'm just ignoring them when I make one choice and acknowledging them when I make the other.

This seems to be a running theme for me lately, and for good reason. I'm about to change my whole life as well as my child's - getting married, moving to a new place, enrolling in a new school, finding a new job. While my status quo has included all the struggles that any single, working mother faces, the struggles have been predictable. Though I've missed the variety of New Orleans, the culture and the opportunities, I've grown accustomed to the quiet nights of a small town. I've had moments of loneliness, but I've gotten used to being alone.

Despite inherent monkey wrenches in the machine, I've carved out a safe, cozy little life, and now I'm leaving it behind in favor of an exciting unknown. There's a certain amount of trepidation in sacrificing the comfort of a dull familiarity, an often worrisome familiarity, even in favor of a promising unknown.

There was a moment, months ago, when I had to weigh those two choices - to stay or to go, to risk or to retreat - and make a decision. It was nerve-racking trying to imagine every possible scenario that might result from either choice, and of course, it's impossible. There was no doubt in my mind that I loved my fiance Jack and that we'd be happy, but it meant changing everything my kid and I know in one swift motion. Everything. A very patient friend, after months of listening to me worry over possible futures, finally said, "You don't get to know what will happen. You just have to decide."

Jack has said the same thing about my writing. I've always written just for myself because I enjoy it. I've written a novel a year since Fain was a baby, but they were always just an escape for me, a free vacation. Recently, as I've considered publishing, I've been gripped by fear. Writing for myself is safe; writing for publication is a risk. Jack consoled me in a moment of neurotic crisis by telling me that if I tried and failed, nothing would change anyway, so I may as well get on with it. (Poor man, he's taken the great risk of marrying a neurotic lunatic.)

If I don't choose the risk of the unknown - whether it's marrying, moving, or writing - then I may as well quit teaching. If I won't take risks myself, even if it's scary as hell, I've forfeited the right to ask my kids to take risks.

A sense of limitless possibilities

I've spent most of the day walking around New Orleans, re-exploring. Although North Carolina has been good to me during the past seven years, I did miss the sense of unexpected possibilities that I always had in New Orleans.

After walking around my small town in North Carolina a few times, I had memorized it. Once I became that familiar with it, I started to forget what it was like to be surprised and excited by constant newness. I think in a way, it also limited my sense of my own possibilities. Walking around today, peeking down streets, into shops, I got that sensation of expansiveness that I remembered from my time here before.

I remember my very first night in New Orleans. I was twenty four, and I arrived at the hostel where I'd managed to get a job just as the daytime sky was fading into a gray blue evening. I remember standing outside the old house on Prytania breathing in the air. It had that thick, sweet nighttime in the South smell that I'd never noticed anywhere else before. I recognize it in other places now, but it always makes me feel as if I'm standing back in New Orleans on that first night. I imagine it's the smell of old oaks and palms and jasmine breathing out a sigh of  relief with the setting of the sun.

I was overwhelmed with excitement back then. I'd always wanted to visit the city, but I never imagined that I might live there. I'd grown up in a small town with a strong sense of expectation and duty. Striking out into the world alone hadn't been among my plans, and it was just a strange caprice that prompted me to pack everything up and leave what wouldn't be packed up behind. Standing there then, I was still surprised by what I'd done. I was still a little dizzy with a sense of the unreality of it.

That was probably what made New Orleans so special to me. My snap decision to break out of the limits that I imagined for myself seemed bound up with the city so that I attributed to it a surreal magical quality that continues to color my view of it. I get the same thrill now when I strike out on a long walk here that I got those fourteen years ago. That I'm on an adventure. That anything is possible. That I might still surprise even myself.