Change of Address

We moved six months ago. A new address, a new house, huge change.

From birth until I was thirteen years old, I changed street addresses only once. For the following twenty years, however, I changed twelve times… and I am not counting the three months of living with friends in Chicago. Now I am at home address number fifteen.

Changing an address isn’t easy. While I know many more people, my husband included, who have moved far more frequently, I contemplate what it does to one’s stability and security to move often. What are the differences of those who move often and those who have lived in the same house for over forty years?

When we moved in March, we heard that the average time one spends at an address was about seven years. Whatever the reason, people change houses frequently. For a country so skeptical of change, Americans certainly make that major change quite often: their home address.

Personally, this move has been a major feat for me – and still is. I have dreams that we still live in our other house. Or I dream that we are still house-hunting. We had planned to move in a few years, but we felt grounded and established where we were. We had achieved goals and were riding along great at that point. While our previous house was not my ideal home, I miss it. I miss who I was when we lived there.

Not that moving changes your complete persona. You are still who you “are.” Yet it does modify things about day-to-day life. In this instance, my job was even impacted. Expectations and schedules are directly affected by moving. You have to get to know a house and its quirks. You eventually feel that it is home. The differences of the words house and home intrigue me.

The "house" address is just simply a postal location, so that you can receive packages and bills. But think about the reactions you get or give about an address… positive, negative, stereotypical. So many people link identity with a neighborhood. Where you live says something about you, doesn’t it?

A "home" is where you look forward to going at the end of your day. It is a place where you feel safe and where you are comfortable. It takes me a long time to feel safe and comfortable. Is it that the “right” personalities adjust quickly to moving… or is that personality trait formed by how much one moved as he grew up? Because of my resistance to change when I was young, does it make me take more time to adjust to my new house? Or is it because there is so much about this house that requires change (and work!) that my excitement and comfort are restricted? (I tend to sway toward the latter explanation.)

House or home, an address is temporary. You won’t live there forever… you can’t live there forever. Fewer and fewer people buy a house, make it a home and stay there long enough to even have a grandchild visit. Some down-size. Some have to move to a one-story layout or to a retirement home.

Six months. I don’t know if I should have adjusted by now. The house, my identity… I wonder if I’ll have any of it figured out, or if I’ll be any more comfortable, before we change addresses again.