I heard somewhere, probably Paris Hilton’s tweet, that the top three most traumatic events in life are 1) death of a spouse 2) public speaking (especially when no one is in their underwear) and 3) Donald Trump holding public office of any kind. Shortly after those is “moving,” which my family is in the middle of.
The concept of moving is deceivingly simple because it can be put in one pithy sentence. “Put things in boxes and send them away.” But it’s kind of a like a hippie saying “Stop war.” After the initial declaration, it gets complicated.
The thing about moving is that all those things you put off until tomorrow, all those miscellaneous drawers filled with stuff from your pocket, all those piles of papers from lawyers you’re trying to forget, all those broken novelty figurines you were going to glue the heads back on, and all those gifts you never exchanged, well all of them have to be dealt with. It’s a procrastinator’s nightmare. Tomorrow has arrived.
My house now is a mess of boxes and piles of stuff and piles of stuff in boxes and piles of boxes in stuff. If an IED went off in my house right now, no one would notice. Unfortunately, the end is nowhere in sight. A single drawer can take up an entire afternoon, no alcohol involved. Each knickknack has to be reminisced about and sighed over before it can be throw in the garbage. Sometimes things might even need to be saved.
Do I save the first book I ever read to my daughter? Do I save out of focus photos my dad took of family sitting on sofas looking overfed at Thanksgiving? Do I throw away all those letters from the IRS I never opened? Normally, I’d just put those things in a drawer to sort tomorrow, most likely by my grandkids - not yet born. But with moving, you have to put off being a procrastinator.
My family’s move is compounded with the fact we are shipping our things from Taiwan to Pennsylvania, and we have to pay by the pound. That means sending a can of Coke would cost about fifty cents – not really worth a can of Coke – but is it worth a giant bottle of glitter glue I bought at Costco? Each minute brings a new decision, and stuffing it in the closet is not an option.
Yet through all the despair, I think there are good life lessons in moving. Learning to let go of CD’s I haven’t listened to in seven years. Facing the fact I will never wear size 32 Levi’s again. Realizing throwing away a Christmas card from 2004 is not insulting my friend’s family. And, yes, okay, the edible thong was probably not as romantic as I thought. But more than anything, I’ve learned how much moving sucks. In fact if anyone has any public speaking to do, it sounds like a nice break right now.
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