I always seem to move under the worst circumstances.
I moved out of my college apartment while I had alcohol poisoning. I have only the vaguest memory of vomiting several times in rapid succession on the eggshell-colored berber carpet while the new tenants looked on in horror. (Totally my fault.) Years later I moved across the country while my husband was wheelchair-bound, recovering from an accident. (Not my fault.)
This time around, I moved immediately after an exhausting grad school residency while I had bronchitis on a 110-degree day. (The Universe’s fault.)
On this move, I discovered I have things. So many, many things. Things I didn’t even know I had. Things I probably don’t need but moved anyway, just in case. Things I was too sick and hot and exhausted to think about, so I just shoved them into a box.
Thing after thing after thing.
Dog toys.
Ticket stubs, envelopes of photo negatives, programs and other scrapbook memories.
Fifty-seven jars of spices.
Makeup.
1992 Fairborn High School marching band at Grand Nationals VHS tape.
Rice cooker.
Blazers I haven’t worn since I tried them on at the store.
An IKEA table.
A Target lamp.
A bookcase from nowhere in particular.
Nineteen crates of books.
Four crates of cookbooks.
Five crates of textbooks.
A drawer full of socks.
A chair.
Magazines that haven’t been read. I went through and purged a big chunk of the stack, but still two years’ worth of Shape, Fitness and Self remain. (This is what hope looks like.)
Box of markers.
Box of pens.
Box of nail polish, some very clumpy.
A bottle of Sambuca that has been moved from place to place since college. Because I don’t like Sambuca.
Coffeepot, coffee grinder and 12 varieties of tea.
Souvenirs from Obama’s inauguration. The first one.
A heavy bedspread made of sari fabric, purchased on a festive night in Goa. The kind of night in which I didn’t think about the results of my actions, such as how to get a bedspread from India to Palm Springs.
Scarves.
A plastic tub filled with newspaper articles I wrote before everything went online.
My mother’s rocking chair. It is ugly. But it is from this chair that she sang lullabies to me, whispered German nursery rhymes and rocked me to sleep, so I will carry this chair until I die.
Crockpot.
The good news is that on the other side of this hot, gross, sickly move, the perfect townhouse was waiting for me. It’s so perfect and spacious and nice, I don’t want my new home to become cluttered and uncomfortable.
So now that all of my things are here, I’ve finally started to get rid of them.
2 Comments
This comforts me so much. I am still throwing away things that I moved here a few months ago, and I thought I had thrown away so much. I was evidently in some deep denial.
At the very least, you know what to do with the Sambuca.
I moved a bunch of “stuff” (George Carlin’s definition) across the country only to ask myself, “What was I thinking!!!?)This was 10 years ago. I immediately took a bunch of things to the consignment store and sold them. But; I still am drowning in paper work, memorabilia, things I can’t decide if I want or need, and they run the gamut of possessions…friends have offered to purge for me and it would actually be a relief if I’d let them, but then again…things are so personal; no one can make that decision but me! It’s a conundrum.