Shifting Complete

    I remember one day not so long ago I was watching a movie with my siblings. My mom came in, looked at me specifically (my stuff was all over our rental house), and said to pause our movie because she needed to tell us something. Once we got to a good place to pause our movie, she told us the news: we needed to move a week early, only two days from then. 

    I didn't really think about what she had said until the end of the movie. I had just returned from a trip with my older sister Coco, my dad, and some others about two days and twenty hours previously. Now we needed to move in two days, and I couldn't tell you where half of my things were. So the day before we really started to move, I closed my bedroom door and got to work. I found my backpack (booksack, bookbag, whatever you want to call it) that I thought should be able to hold all my clothes and jammed them all in there except the clothes I would wear the next day and my glasses in case I would need them later. Then I told my mom I was ready to move. 

    She said to give it to my dad, as he was already moving some things. As the city we live in already has enough air pollution, we walked. With all our suitcases and chairs and food and tables and couch, we walked. Thankfully, the house we were moving to was only ten steps from our house, across a busy road, and sixty more steps down another road, past the gate and into the house. Then up three floors to the bedrooms and four floors to the kitchen and living room.

 The next day we found out that we weren't supposed to take the chairs, couch, and coffee table; some of our work had been in vain. All the hundreds of people who stared at us like we were crazy (including our cook and cleaner, who we call Maya Didi---didi being the polite term meaning "older sister") were going to stare at us again as we carried the same things we had just brought from our house yesterday back. 

When we dropped off the first couple of chairs back at our old rent house, Maya Didi (who speaks and understands limited English) looked at us and said, "Shifting, shifting," Here in this place they don't say moving when you go to a new house, instead they say "shifting." 

    While we were still shifting houses on Sunday, my dad stayed home from Mass with Daniel, who had thrown up the night before. When we got to the Church (with a pyx) my mom asked if we could take Communion home to my dad. My siblings and I waited outside while my mom talked to the priest. She came back and told us the priest said he would come to our house later to personally administer Communion. After Mass my mom texted my dad and told him what was going to happen. 

True to his word, the priest came later that evening and gave my dad Communion. Before he left we asked him to bless our house and, having a bottle of holy water and a special prayer book in his backpack, he did.

 

    It took two days to move the coffee table, couch, and the rest of the chairs back to the rental house but, it was worth it. Because, as they say, "Shifting Complete!"

                                                                     (: Mallory

My little brother says he wants to write his name here so: DANIEL kppiijjooikij08p;mjoiu99-0ojjkmn. (That last part he added just for fun.)

Here is the view from our rooftop where we hang our laundry to dry in the sun: