San Diego, September 1st, 6 AM

I am sitting on the bathroom floor in the hotel room at the Hyatt Hotel. I am sharing a room with my big brother and I don’t want to wake him. He is 51. I am 46. Will I always call him my Big Brother?

It is moving day for Mom. Bekins Moving Company arrives between 8 and 9. We are ready for them. It is a whole different thing helping someone else move as opposed to moving yourself. Not that I have too much trouble filling up the boxes to cart off to Goodwill (or Charity Shops as we say in the UK)….but when it is someone else’s stuff, get out the pitch fork!

The things we found.

She has saved the words to songs I wrote in Thailand for a Farewell Dinner with our Chieng Mai University hosts in 1983.

She saved the medical records from my younger brother’s car crash in Yuma, Arizona in 1985 when he was driving my older brothers work truck, fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up covered in floor wax when he drove off the road.

I found the title to an insurance policy from the first house she bought by herself after she and my dad divorced in 1973.

Poems and cards written to her by children, grandchildren, friends. They were mini time capsules that transport us to another time and dimension.

I am so glad she is sitting next to me and my brother while we do this. To laugh together. To remember together. To keep the choice pieces and throw the rest in the recycle bins together.

Yesterday Mom had a open house from 1 – 3 pm so her friends could come and pick over what she was getting rid of and have a bit of her with them after she moves. I love the comments they made to me on the sly, out of earshot of my mom. “I don’t know what we are going to do without Jo Anne. She is so positive.”; “She is the one who holds us together.”; “She is so much fun and funny.” ; “She is the rock.” ; “She is the one who connects us and keeps us on track and looking forward to new things.”

That is my mom.

I am so proud of my mom. She is so accomplished. So fun and funny. So wise. She is a healer. She is a giver. So intuitive. So able to grasp any situation and find the best pieces. She is calling the retirement community in Scottsdale where she is moving her “camp”. She has lived in San Diego for 34 years but isn’t sad to be leaving. She is looking forward to making new friends and exploring a new place.

What she is sad about is that she isn’t able to help me and my brothers anymore. Maybe not physically because her arthritis is so nasty her hands have turned into claws. But she gives me so many things everyday. Mostly, her outlook.

While she is homeless for the next few months before her new place in Scottsdale is available, I am homeless, by choice, in the RV. We are both being flexible and have put ourselves into new situations and are looking forward to the adventure.

I hope I can channel my mom on my bad days to remind myself of life’s bigger adventure and that every day is a choice on how you approach it. Yes, it sounds sappy, but it works.