Everything we carry with us.

Yesterday I packed suitcases. I packed a bin of toys for our month in Austin. (We’ll be in a temporary home.) I packed a bin of toys to be delivered to us our first month in San Francisco. (We’ll also be in a temporary home there until November.) I packed fall clothes for all four of us in a bin.

I packed suitcases for the month of September. I packed bibs and sippy cups and plastic bowls. I packed clothes for my vacation (alone!) with my husband at the end of September. (I’ll tell you more about that one soon.)

I organized parts of the garage into things to be delivered in November, things to be delivered in October, and things to be taken to our temporary Austin house.

I remembered that Halloween will pass before we’re in our real home, so I ran to boys’ bookshelf and found Where is Baby’s Pumpkin? and added it to its appropriate bin.

I checked lists and made lists. (Which is amazing, because I’m the worst list-keeper/checker in the great big world.)

Then I sat on the carpet and made the cars talk and August’s green car was “invented” by Phineas and Ferb and it was throwing water balloons at the bad guys. And I read Corduroy aloud to Brooksie. And August helped me make mac n cheese with extra peas.

And I made food for tomorrow, my last day to “host” and provide lunch at August’s co-op school.

The boys each wore the one pair of pajamas I’d left out for them to sleep in for the next two nights. I put my baby to sleep and gathered dishes while Chris read the last chapter of Charlotte’s Webb on the couch to my boy.

And all of it felt like an ending: the book and the dishes and the full suitcases and bins and the plans for the next two months and the unknowns.

All of it felt like an ending, the kind accompanied by a sweeping, gentle soundtrack. Music moving across all of the packed pieces, across everything we carry with us and everything we leave behind.