MOVING

By Liz Moser

For people like me whose flights of meaning and fantasy are usually rooted in knowing exactly where everything is, what it consists of, and when it will be needed, moving out of one’s longtime dwelling is a most fiercely disruptive occurrence. When I say “flights of meaning and fantasy,” I’m talking about how I deal with life, such as relations with my nearest and dearest, making schedules and meeting deadlines, and paying bills. In other words, carrying out all the obligations thrust upon me and still having time to paint my toenails and write poetry.

Moving upended my life in two important ways. First, nothing was in its proper place, so that I was ungrounded, couldn’t find anything, lost my sense of order and sequencing. I floated directionless through the days in spite of daily attempts at “do lists.” Second, I found things unexpectedly, which further alienated me from schedule keeping and the orderly pursuit of specific goals.

To move, the first order is PURGE—get rid of all the meaningless debris of the past. Well, practically nothing is meaningless. Underneath my desk blotter were pictures of smiling adolescents, one of which is me, on a beach, under a large tree, on a mountain top, each with its story and memories. Where are they now, my friends? How have I changed since then? And already, I had spent fifteen minutes dreaming about what used to be, looking up addresses and making promises to myself about recontacting high school friends, even though I’m already out of the workforce, retired. The pictures whisk away the time between. But I’d spun away from the job at hand, which was to fill the wastebasket and free myself, to lighten my load.

A worse sin than stopping to read old letters is to not read them, to take the packages of envelopes from the bottom drawer of the desk and throw them away. I regretted this action the moment the garbage truck picked them up, realizing it wasn’t just children’s report cards and old boyfriends’ love notes that went bouncing down the road, but my own husband’s earnest reporting of his every day away from me when he was in the service. No way to reclaim them.

Purging meant putting towels that were even a little bit frayed into the rag pile, throwing away my favorite sneakers, and the sweater with the moth hole. In other words, denying myself the comfortable and soft equipment in favor of a future where everything is new and neat and starchy.

Purging meant deciding what I really desperately wanted and/or needed, what could be sold and actually bring a bit of cash, what could be given to Goodwill, and, finally, what must be thrown or, worse, hauled away at a cost. Also, I had to bring the children, now grown, to view the offerings. They found nothing attractive except the items I had already determined to keep.

Once the keep/sell/give/toss decisions were made, I spent weeks of heavy lifting, boxing, bagging, and carrying the rejected items to their various destinations. Finally, I brought the residue into the newly scoured, wallpapered, and sanded home, which appeared much too small to accommodate my pared-down belongings. Drawers were too short, cabinets too shallow, and the closets didn’t begin to hold our clothes, to say nothing of out-of-season coats and snow boots. I felt like Cinderella’s sisters trying to fit their outsize feet into the magical glass slipper. Underwear, table linens, office supplies were stuffed into closet crevices, book shelves, and desk drawers. My friends helped unpack the kitchen boxes, leaving me to spend days trying to find my favorite knife and the soap powder for the new washing machine, which, along with all of the other beautifully engineered appliances, has quirky requirements for starting and stopping.

My first night in the new house was an adventure. Noises distressed me, even though I was sure they were only creaks in the heating system. Car headlights from the street passed through the room like search beams. Even the old bed, freshly made, felt foreign against strange new walls. Finding the way to the bathroom in the dark brought back childhood terrors of being closed in a doorless room.

Once moved, abandoned by my helpmate, who went back to his regular work routine, and my helpers, who went on to other good deeds, I tried to retrieve my sense of security. This has been hampered by not being able to find what I’m looking for or where I put anything, even yesterday. Minor disasters with unpaid bills and unkept appointments have given me, I fear, a reputation for being a ditz, the worst possible category that women of a certain age can be placed into if they wish to continue being taken seriously.

It’s taken several months, but I think now I am able to move through my domain, reaching automatically for all of the ingredients I need for the meal I’m easily preparing. The insurance records from three years ago are placed in the proper file in the proper drawer of my study, and I have located the box containing wrapping paper for the inevitable gifts one brings these days to the houses of friends who have just moved. As a prominent recent public figure has expressed so well, “I feel their pain.”   

 

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