Moved

Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me here!

In the almost six years that we lived in our NJ house, we somehow filled it up. Sound familiar? I remember the sense of freedom and giddiness when we first got the keys at closing and walked into it empty. “A blank canvas. So many possibilities.” It didn’t last. We added baby stuff and storage unit stuff and so much family stuff. David’s mother had moved out of her house not long before we began dating and he and his sisters had inherited many of its contents, including for David, a number of large antiques and 83 boxes of books (!). I contributed to the filling of our space, too. I especially indulged in pretty clothes for our daughter, my only child and a total girly girl (I say in my defense). We liked our own stuff quite a lot. We tolerated each other's. But there was no doubt that there was too much. It was clear as we contemplated our move to Minnesota that this was no DIY situation; we needed professional movers.

As David was madly tearing the MN farmhouse kitchen down to the studs, it fell to me back east to research movers. When I heard the first quote, I actually started laughing at the agent, and turned him down flat. However, after getting 3 more “virtual” quotes—virtual due to Covid—all within the same monetary ballpark, I resigned myself to the hefty cost of our relocation. I chose a large, national company based on a few key determinants. First, their quote was binding—meaning there would be no re-negotiations to get our things off the truck. That’s actually a thing. Second, full replacement value insurance was included in that total bound price—meaning, no shopping around for additional coverage with another company. Next, our booking agent assured me that once loaded, our things would not come off the truck until they arrived at our new house—meaning less handling, and therefore, less opportunity for damage. Finally, I chose this big, fancy company because the agent used first names when talking about the movers. No, really. He named who he believed would come pack the fragile items (the best team in the business), which crew would load them (I wouldn’t believe their efficiency), and the great Midwest-based driver we’d likely be assigned (Carl, I believe?? Such a nice guy). There would be continuity. No random subcontractors handing our things off like so much flotsam. He made it sound like he knew each of these folks, and that he vouched for them personally. He said that every person who worked for the company had full accountability and was held to the same standard in terms of background checks, procedures, Covid safety, etc. It sounded, the way he described it, like a simultaneously perfect moving machine and a cozy group of comrades created to make our life easier. Did I mention the booker was British? He really did sound like an expert.

I am betting most of you have had bad moving experiences. And really, are there any good ones? My move from Los Angeles to Brooklyn was particularly unfortunate. The crew that packed me up in LA was ok, I thought at the time, but the number of items broken on the other end changed my mind in retrospect. The real issue was that the first truck broke down and everything got moved to a second truck. But (wait for it), the second truck wound up being to small for all my items! Funny! Enter a third truck, and all of this meant that my delivery got delayed multiple times, finally showing up days late *and* at 10:30 at night. Want to guess how fun it was to have my brand new Carroll Gardens landlords, a kind but all-business older couple from the neighborhood, stand out on the stoop watching every single item go up their pristine and fiercly guarded 19th century Brownstone staircase well past midnight? Yeah. It was bad. Also, the two Russian movers—one small and angry, the other rotund and mute—had not been told of said stairs and expressed their feelings eloquently with every heaving drop of a box. They did not speak much English, but I’m pretty sure there was a great deal of cursing. My tiny one bedroom, filled to the brim, felt like a crime scene the next day.

All this to say, when I chose our movers this time, I thought I asked the hard questions. I thought I was savvy and knowing. I thought wrong. There is no winning at moving.

A few days before our new movers were set to arrive and load up our life, I got a call from our move coordinator—different from the booking agent. This was a very sweet woman with whom I’d bonded over packing stories already. I sort of thought we were friends. What is wrong with me?? She told me that there were two “small changes” to our move. As agreed, the trailer would be loaded on Monday morning (this was Friday) but would now need to be “dropped off” on Sunday and spend the night in front of our house. The trailer. Of a semi truck. Have you seen semi trucks driving on the highway, friend? That. Except bigger, somehow. This in our quaint residential neighborhood that does not allow overnight parking of cars, let alone gargantuan moving vans. She then let me know that actually, our items would leave our house and go to their warehouse in Upstate New York to see if another family's items might be added. Once that was determined, we would be assigned an “over road driver.” This would not be Carl, the man I already considered a friend. After Random Trucker Person got our semi load to the MN/WI warehouse, a local crew would take over. And guess what? They had now decided that our 7 acre open farmland was too hard to drive a semi onto and that they would, in fact, be transferring everything onto two smaller trucks for delivery. I almost had a panic attack during this call.

My question at this point: are all movers assholes? Not the crews who show up (BK Russians excluded). Not the babyface kid in LA who, while watching me re-arrange half-empty shelves to make them less awful for my ex, quietly said out of nowhere, “You’re still taking care of him.” Not the seasoned pro in MN who clearly hated wearing a mask but did so and who spoke to David with glowing pride of his daughter who teaches kids with special needs. Not any of the guys on the ground on either coast this time, actually. They were honestly lovely. I mean the industry…the tactics…the false promises…the sheer ridiculous notion that changing your whole life is going to be seamless, simple and scar free. It. Is. Not. The move of a household can be no more simple than the move of every known part of your life into an unknown future. It is a gamble from all angles. The rest is just marketing.

I will admit, our NY-based crew was incredibly efficient, as promised. One point for the British booker! However, after getting special permission from the police for their massive trailer to be parked on our street the night before, the fast and fastidious move team DID NOT TAKE THE TRAILER WITH THEM once full. They just left, and fast. Over the foreman’s shoulder I barely heard, “We just load.” WTH?? It took multiple calls and emails over the next few hours to get a driver to show. He made a point to tell me he’d come all the way from Long Island, in a tone that made it clear that was not his plan for the day. At this point, I was so grateful the trailer was leaving, I ignored the attitude.

You might think things were finally settled at this point. All packed up, household possessions off our property, on their way to MN at last. And, yes…the things were...

But us? Well. We made some mistakes, friend. There were items we decided to take ourselves in our vehicles. Precious things. Fragile things. Last minute things. We were not planning to return to our east coast house once we drove away the next morning. We were putting that house on the market ASAP and would not to come back for its eventual closing, due to the pandemic. We thought we’d load up after the movers left, get a good night’s sleep and drive away first thing. All the parents out there understand: kids travel best when still half-asleep and drowsily cheerful. I’d researched a half-way-point hotel with ridiculous care, settling nervously on a Hilton Embassy Suites that promised me over the phone to seal our room after cleaning on Sunday morning, with no one to enter before we arrived on Tuesday night. Covid precautions. Once the ‘just loaders’ left, we started packing our cars in earnest. I gave our child a brand new Frozen 2 lego set and got to work. As the sun set, we were exhausted, and not close to finished. My husband hit a wall around 8pm and vowed to rise early. I stayed up past 10 to make sandwiches (of all things) because we were trying to avoid stopping at public places.

The next morning, we got up at 6. Everything that we packed seemed to leave two more items in its wake. Somehow there was just more to do at each turn. I cleaned out the fridge and filled the recycling bin for the final time with random condiment jars. We pulled last minute items, including our queen mattress, out to the curb for junk pick-up. David literally used a measuring tape to maximize his packing Tetris in our small SUV and big pick-up truck. Even so, both were so overstuffed that we had to ask our kind neighbors to mail us three boxes filled with our last load of laundry and who even knows what else. You get to a point with moving when all your things take on this vague, slightly sinister quality. You stop hoping it will all arrive safely and start hoping for gasoline and a match. It just took FOREVER to get out of there. And it was 92 degrees out with full humidity, which helped none of our attitudes. If I had known how hard this step would be, I would’ve given us one more day to close things up. But, we had this hotel reservation, and a kid, and we just had to leave. Our plan was to drive away by 7 or 8 AM. When we finally buckled our girl into her booster seat and gave virtual hugs to all the neighbors out on their steps to bid us farewell, it was 11:22. The hotel was more than 10 hours away, not accounting for gas and bathroom stops. As a parent who will do almost anything to stick to a consistent bedtime for my child, I was in full-on silent scream mode by this time, but there was no choice but to accept reality and make the best of things. With a final wave, I pressed the car’s start button and…nothing happened. That’s right. The battery was dead. Under his breath, one of the neighbor kids said, “Man, I didn’t think anything else could go wrong.” I took Finley out of her seat and we sat on our front steps. The neighbor kid’s mom, Julie, brought us ice water, bless her. I tried not to cry. Julie said, “Listen, it will all get better from here. Maybe there’s an accident you’re avoiding by being here a few more minutes.” I clung to this and drank my water. And then, David successfully jumped the battery, the car purred contentedly and we all got in and waved again and drove away at last.

The trip began well. Our girl had movies to watch, and I listened to my book and called my parents. We caravanned with David in his truck. I always love following him on long drives, waving at him in his side mirror and carving a synchronized path through the highways and byways. I relaxed. This was really happening! My mood shifted to cautious relief and the beginnings of excitement. Though I was stressed over our daughter missing her normal bedtime by a few hours and wished the morning had been a lot easier than it had been, this was simply one of those extraordinary days that required flexibility. I was feeling quite all right about everything, actually, when the brake lights emerged. Good old Pennsylvania. Highway 80 was getting a facelift to the tune of an hour and a half slow down. Uhg. We sat in traffic, barely inching forward, and I tried not to use profanity in front of my child. I called the hotel to tell them we’d now be checking in quite late. They assured me that was fine, and we all waited out the traffic with as much zen as we could muster.

When the back-up finally subsided, it was sunset. The horizon erupted in streaks of hot pink and marigold. David called, saying, "Can you believe this sky?" A flock of Canada geese, flying overhead, turned dramatically into a sharp V right over my car. My heart leaped up in the purple clouds with them for a beat and my faith was restored. It wasn’t much further till we would rest. Night fell and the miles stretched behind us. I fought sleepiness by blasting the AC directly on my face. With all those early mornings and the hyper focus of the past few days, I hadn’t slept much. Ironically, as I was trying to keep alert, I was wishing my child would sleep. Her breathing had shallowed, and I thought she was out. I was highly aware of avoiding any bumps in the road, the enemy of every parent with a napping child in the car. One mile from the hotel exit in South Bend, there seemed to be a number of seams and potholes in the highway. Annoyed, I watched the road carefully to try to avoid them. And then I felt my right front tire hit something and come down hard. I knew that feeling. It had happened to me only one other time on the 405 in LA: a blow out. Holy Hell. A half mile from our exit, desperately trying to call David while pulling over to the shoulder, I tried to calmly explain flat tires to my woken child. I’m pretty sure I failed on the calm front. David was already at the exit. For the second time that day, I slowly inched along a highway, this time in shock. We finally made it to where David was waiting, and I saw that it was one of those big circular exit ramps—a lot further to go to reach a safe spot to stop. I went as slowly as I could to minimize the damage to the wheel, but it felt like death as the car awkwardly clumped along. It was 11PM. We stopped both cars in the median of the toll plaza at the bottom of the ramp. We found our insurance card to call the emergency number. Finley was bright and cheery in the backseat, her nap having restored her energy. No one answered the call. And then, out of the dark, a State Trooper slid in behind my car, appearing off the exit like a soundless angel. A young woman stepped out. We told her what had happened. She gave David a number to call for tow service. She looked at me for a moment, and I saw her make a decision. She said, “M’am, I’m going to drive you and your daughter to your hotel while your husband waits with the vehicles.” Grateful is not a strong enough word. I clumsily gathered essentials out of the jam-packed Mazda. She instructed me to buckle Finley into the back, behind the driver’s seat and for me to sit in front with her. As I opened the door to get my daughter in, I saw in the center console with the trooper’s riffle—which would be directly at my child’s feet. With a quick, “We do not touch other people’s things,” I fastened her seat belt and took a steadying breath. I was thankful that my kid didn’t even seem to notice.

We were so late to the hotel that we had to ring a bell to be let in. On the plus side, our room did have a seal on the door that stated it was sanitized and had not been opened in the past 48 hours. Poor Finley was completely wired and would not go to sleep, jumping on the beds and eliminating my final reserves of positive parenting. David arrived after following the tow truck to a tire place where they left our car; we would call first thing in the morning and pray for a quick repair. We finally got to bed around 2 AM.

The start of business came early. The tire store was able to get us the very last tire of our kind—on the very last shuttle from their warehouse that day. While we waited, we took thankful advantage of the complimentary (and carefully distanced) Embassy Suites breakfast buffet. Can I tell you what a difference small kindnesses make? There was a solo server in the restaurant when I got there. I asked if I could get to-go boxes for all three of us, not something they usually did. I told him a little of our move story, including the blow out and late arrival. He was not tall, but had a smile so broad his mask could not hide it. Not only did he bend the rules to give me three breakfasts, but he got me a bag to transport it all and his last drink carrier, along with extras for snacks on the road. The food looked delicious and his joy at helping me was so genuine, I could have kissed that dear man, Covid notwithstanding. As we sat in our room, scarfing down omelets and pancakes and crispy bacon, I thought about what we’d been through in the preceding 48 hours, and really in the last 5 months.

For all of us, this time has been unexpected, and mostly in bad ways. I really dislike Pollyanna. I feel sometimes that it’s disingenuous to ignore disappointments in favor of seeming fine. I think that’s better for other people, but that those ignored upsets fester inside of me and actually make the problem grow. I am in favor of a hybrid model, to borrow from our upcoming school year terminology. Let it out. Tell your truth. Preferably to people who won’t judge you for being negative, and know that you are actually a positive person experiencing something hard and needing a soft place to land. After you name the pain, and feel a little sorry for yourself, then you try to find your way out. Look for the good, do what is in your control, or simply just keep going. Change being the only constant means that life will probably throw you a different experience soon.

I look at our days of moving, and I see two truths. Moving companies are out to get us, we made dumb mistakes, traffic sucks, I am a terrible driver, there was a GUN in the car next to my daughter, and so on and on… And: everyone was actually doing their best (some well beyond their job description), and WE did our best under really hard circumstances, and accidents just happen, and generous neighbors and angel Troopers and smiles despite masks and those geese soaring high in the blazing light, and we made it, friend. We got here. We are healthy and we are safe and the world is hard and beautiful and frustrating and funny. It is about how you look at things, but it can take time to allow your perspective to mellow and shift until it is able to frame things in the healthiest way. It’s ok to wait for that to change. I see it well now, for the most part. I am grateful for the helpers. The rest of it makes for a good story. And isn’t that life? The story we tell ourselves about ourselves? We decide what to tell: which parts have starring roles, which words get left out of the final draft. Our story will have all the bits above, but I will let our determination to get to this new place together, regardless of a global pandemic, and the people who came to our aid in big and small ways, stand in the spotlight. When I close my eyes and watch that show in my mind, I am truly moved.