Next Life Chapter, Coming Soon

Wow, you've probably been thinking the past couple of months. Those Littells are ON FIRE with cleaning out their house. And we have been! We've excavated every last space. Eight years of stuff. We were relentless. It's not easy for me to get rid of things but even I was ruthless, driven by quarantine to dive into this project and see it through.

And yet. I haven’t been totally forthcoming on this blog. The thing is, even as we were cleaning in a kind of quarantine fit, as many people were, we were also having constant conversations addressing a single, urgent question: Is it time to move?

Moving away from New Jersey, likely to Pittsburgh, was always the longish-term plan. There would be work hurdles, and school hurdles, and entrenched-in-familiar-routines hurdles, so it was never something we’d seriously considered. We knew we would consider it; we just didn’t know when. Sometimes we thought we’d start talking about it when Lucia was about to enter middle school, a point at which we were pretty sure we’d switch the girls from public to private school, a transition that would make sense coupled with a move. But that was a long year away.

And then--the lockdown. Suddenly every hurdle fell away. Andrew no longer had to commute into his Manhattan office. The girls were no longer going to a physical school. We were separated from our routines and places and people. It was as if the universe had wiped clean the barriers and, amid all of the covid horror, opened a door for a life change. Now’s the time, was the message we were getting. Well, two messages. First: there won’t be a better time than this to uproot ourselves. Second: life is already upside-down, so why not invite in a little more craziness? 

In June, we went to Pittsburgh to look at houses. A lot of houses. We didn’t find anything we liked. (Well, we DID find a beautiful ruin that our realtor called a “wreck” and showed us only because we insisted and she wanted to “get it out of our system,” and which I could barely walk through because of the intense, horrible smell of mildew, and of course we made an offer because it’s Who We Are, and we can all be grateful that our offer was turned down.) We came back to New Jersey thinking we’d be here for another school year and would continue house-hunting as things came up. But then, in July, a couple of new houses came on the market, so we headed to Pittsburgh for a quick trip to see them. One of the houses we saw checked all the boxes: enough space, perfect location in the heart of the city, big backyard. The trifecta. We made an offer and it was accepted the next day.

That was four weeks ago. 

We really didn’t intend to leave New Jersey this quickly. It feels a little clandestine, as though we’re trying to sneak away under cover of night, running from something. But we’re not running away from anything. We’re running toward what, until this pandemic, had been just a vague, shimmery idea of our next chapter. 

As soon as our offer was accepted, I applied the girls to Pittsburgh private schools. Six days ago, we were accepted into our top choice. Another pandemic blessing: the school has an all-virtual start until the end of September, so we won’t have to scramble with school beginning before our closing date. Our NJ house will go on the market in a couple of weeks. I don’t know when we’re moving. There are still a lot of tasks. Work to be done on the new house, work to be done on our house to get it ready to sell, arranging for a moving pod and actual movers.

You know what we DON’T have to worry about? Cleaning out our house. Because we did that already. This move is crazy-fast and a total whirlwind, but we can thank our past selves for having the wherewithal to do the cleanout just in case. 

I’m sure this message of moving will surprise many/most of you. I’m surprised myself. I go back and forth, minute by minute, thinking this is the right move and thinking we’ve made a giant mistake. Mostly, though, I think it’s right. On New Year’s Day this year, Andrew and I both had a very strong feeling that 2020 was going to be a year of major change for us. Of course we had no idea how insane/nightmarish 2020 would actually be, and there’s no doubt all of that has pushed our own decision-making along. But we started this year already primed for something to happen. That’s too passive: we started this year primed to make something happen. And we’re doing it. We’re shifting our foundation. We’re making a new choice for how our life will look. 

And a red-brick house in Squirrel Hill will be the backdrop. 

Let’s be real: The measured tone of this post does not reflect the emotional pummeling of the past few weeks. “Mommy’s crying on the floor again!” one of the kids called out the other day. All of the “problems” we’ve faced are good problems, I know this, but house-hunting and house-bidding and house-selling are intensely emotional. It’s affecting Andrew, too, though he deals with his stress and anxiety by turning to corporate tools, responding to negotiations and challenges with talk of “BATNA” and “workstreams” and other nonsense, and making complicated spreadsheets with a lot of “conditional formatting.” We all have our ways of getting through.

The “Coming Soon!” sign from our realtor went up yesterday. It’s real now. 

Whew. It feels good to come clean to you, my three or four faithful blog readers. More to come in the days and weeks ahead.