I’ve been moving—all summer long really, but especially in the last week. I left Greensboro last Monday with a car full of boxes and crates and baskets and a cello and books stuffed in the cracks between all of them. I stayed a few days with friends in Cleveland and made it to Madison on Thursday.

And here I’ve been settling. My space is in the basement. I have two large windows which look out right on lawn level, as if I’m a growing thing, just poking my head up to see the world of grass and asphalt and the house across the street. Back in Vancouver, my windows were long and high and when I looked out from my bed, all I saw were trees and infinite sky. Yesterday Abby made me a copy of the house key, which I added to the ring next to a key to my parents’ house and a key to Melanie’s that I never gave back. (Sorry, Melanie. I also drove across the U.S. this summer with that sign in my back window that says “Resident of 3950.” I didn’t take it out until a couple days ago.)

Most of settling of course, along with becoming quickly familiar with the local Target and multiple thrift stores, is unpacking. And as I was disemboweling all the boxes and crates and baskets I came across an old pad of paper, one among many. Only the top sheet had been touched, and it was labeled “Contributions to Flight.” I scanned over what I’d scribbled below and realized they were the notes for a blog entry which never came to fruition. I made them while in transit from Greensboro to Vancouver exactly three years ago, and the point of them was how I didn’t really make that move relying much on my own efforts. The energy and confidence of a whole lot of other people had buoyed me right onto that plane.

In another box or crate or basket (or perhaps the same one) were dozens and dozens of envelopes with my name on them, in so many different handwritings. Cards and cards and cards: some for birthdays, some for Christmas, some for hello and some for good-bye, and some just because. I flipped through them, read a few of the most recent, and kept thinking, People are so nice sometimes. They’re just so nice. Maybe it’s funny to keep so many flammable scraps of handwriting reminding me of friends who I may never see again, who I maybe wasn’t even that close to, to drag them from place to place as I move. It’s a stubborn sort of constancy. As I shuffle them and stack them and stow them I imagine them bouying me as I go, providing an infinitely-expanding foundation beneath me as I move from one place to another. They, too, are contributions to flight.

So many things are, though. So many that I can hardly count them. Last week when I left my friend Laura’s house in Cleveland after visiting for a few days, her two-year-old helped me pack the car. He slowly rolled my small silver suitcase down the hall, out the front door, and along the walk to the driveway. And then that afternoon, when I got to Madison, the two-year-old of this house helped me unpack the car, carrying all those books that had been in the cracks between places. He would hold out his arms to take little stacks of three or four, sometimes stopping to stare down at an interesting cover with awe as he walked, then dumping each small load carefully in the corner of my room, over and over and over, until a great pile of riches rose up and up before us.