Balancing the book Bitter Waters: Life and Work In Stalin's Russia on my head and whimpering my feeble request to my mother in the next room. My hands rest empty in my lap and I am surrounded by six cardboard boxes full of books and, by my calculated estimations, about 13 boxes left to pack still on the bookshelves. 'Can we move these to the new house?' I ask, pointing to the shelves. 'Loree - they're built in', she states pointedly as if I didn't already know they are screwed to the walls and ceiling. Can't we still move them?

I look at the bare green walls marred only by my brown messenger bag hanging on a porcelain hook. My violin case leans up against my brothers bedroom door and a trash bag against that. Strangely the bag is filled with high school graduations cards - I only kept three, papers, poems and art from the past few years. Memories are nicer than memorabilia - they only take up space in your mind instead of your closet.

Josh Groban belts out Latin words I do not understand downstairs and I hear the Malibu's engine start. I smell evergreen and there is the usual apple scent our home retains. Benjamin's baby monitor hums and I hear him sigh in his sleep. I find a pewter plate bearing my name as the 1997 winner of the Clover Leaf award. How important that highest honor was when I won it. How much dust it now gathers sitting in a box, unlooked at, unthought of for five years. There is a scratch on that antique mirror behind my door. Is it even my mirror anymore, even though I know that scratch better than anyone? Every door in my house sounds completely different than any other. I know all of their sounds. Only one of the floorboards in the hallway squeaks loudly; don't walk on that one. There are six and seven foot icicles hanging off our eaves, but it is thawing out and all around I hear them crashing down to the porch and the sunroom roof. There is an earring on my nightstand; it's not mine. I don't even wear those Birkenstocks very much anymore. Have I ever worn that sweater? Thanks Preston for letting me have the basket - I really do like it. There is a rainbow colored slinky on my floor and a bottle with cranberry juice beside it.

I am moving.

I take Bitter Waters: Life and Work In Stalin's Russia off my head. It's hard enough to balance one thing without trying to manage two.