moving along...not moving on...

We've started packing to move to our new apartment. Back to Westfield. Beautiful, lively Westfield. THE place for young families. The town I lived in my bachelorette apartment for 7 years, kissing frog after frog after frog...but loving every minute of it. Then the town where we had our first great apartment, newly engaged. And then still the town we had our first child in. Noah's only home. We moved out of Westfield  as soon as we found another apartment- 8 weeks after Noah died. I still have trouble driving past the park. The Trader Joe's. The macaroni and cheese place. The "everything". But this happy and happily imperfect apartment fell at our feet and it just felt right. We're moving back to where I roamed the streets with my son. Where he made friends with everyone who passed his stroller. We he reached out his hand to every doggie we passed. And to every prettty little girl...The town where he once yelled up at the big clock attached to the side of a downtown building ..."COCK!" . He hadn't mastered the letter "L" yet.
So I was going through bookshelves and found spiral notebooks. I flip through the pages mostly finding random "to do" lists...but I just found something that threw me back in time. It was a formula schedule for a babysitter. Most likely Cousin Kayla since we really didn't leave him with anyone else. On the bottom of the page it says:

STUFF HE LIKES:
-TV
-eating his fist
-eating fabric
-the fan in his bedroom
-laying in his jungle
-staring at girls

It may me smile. It made me cry. I'm enbracing the fact that its easier to find a treasure like this than it would've been 6 months ago. But I guess it depends on the day-maybe even on the moment.

I used to love to sit at Barnes and Noble and read magazines...for hours. For a long time after Noah died, it all seemed so trivial. Not just the magazines-just everything. Last year for the annivesary of Noah's death ( all the parents in our club mark their days) we went to a place called Adamstown PA. It's subtitle is "The Antique Capitol of the World". I usually love all that but this was torturous. Surrounded by stuff...just stuff. I didn't care about stuff anymore. I hated stuff. Why was stuff still here and Noah wasn't? It's getting easier a bit. I'm making peace with the stuff that is here vs. my son who is not. The whole process seems to be in the stage called "meeting in the middle". My inner sad and my outer happy...I want my inner and outer to meet up for a cup of coffee, a cookie...maybe even share a turkey sandwich.