Once a month this year, a letter reflecting on moving. Part of an ongoing exchange between myself and Zachary Stoltzfus of Further Afield.
When I wrote to you last, I was still in Kansas City, surrounded by shelves being emptied and books whose destinations I did not yet know. I write now from a rented house in East Cork, a short drive from Ballymaloe, where Sally is spending her days at the cookery school.
The house in Kansas City still exists. We still rent it. In a few weeks we will return and begin the work of packing it up in earnest. Between now and then there will be Rome, and then Istanbul. I am not sure whether this counts as leaving a place or postponing the act of leaving it.
You wrote that when one is moving the veil feels as thin as wax paper. I have been thinking about that since I read it.
A few days ago, while Sally was at Ballymaloe, I took Crispin and Clemence to Youghal.
The town sits at the mouth of an estuary. We walked the old walls, which still stand above the rooftops, and wandered into St. Mary’s church. There is a stone there, very old, worn smooth by generations of hands. I put my own hand against it. It was cool, despite the warmth of the summer day.
Both children touched it. Crispin with the impatience of someone already half-turned toward the next thing. Clemence more slowly, her hand flat against the stone for a moment before she too was looking elsewhere.
It is her hand I remember.
She will not remember any of it. She is too young. The stone has been touched by over six hundred years of hands and will be touched by more, and hers was among them for a moment this week, and she will never know it happened.
What has gone missing since arriving here is not any particular object. It is familiarity itself. The shops are different. The roads are different. Even the way people give directions is different.
And yet, after a few days, something else begins. A child runs ahead. A hand goes flat against an old stone. Someone carries groceries home along a street I have never walked. New friends make room for one more chair in their courtyard. I do not immediately recognize the place, but I begin to recognize what is happening in it.
You wrote that the road will continue to reveal itself. For the moment ours runs through Cork. Soon it turns toward Rome and then Istanbul, and then back to the house we have not yet finished leaving.
I have not yet begun to pack it.
Next: July 2026