Packing

I am abysmal at sorting and packing. What I end up doing is LOOKING, instead of turning into a packing automaton, filling boxes as if I were some assembly-line robot. Maybe it's just that I am too attached to all my stuff. Just this weekend, I read in the Washington Post magazine a first-person article on hoarding. (It was written by the guy who moderated a Creative Non-Fiction workshop I took several years back, so of course I had to read it..) What he was told by the experts was that the hoarder looks at his or her 'stuff' as a second self; that throwing things away diminishes himself.

Well, that may be true, because all my things added together DO comprise a pretty good self all by themselves. If you analyzed the contents of my desks and cupboards and drawers, you'd have a fairly accurate picture of who I am. Frighteningly so. There are dishes. LOTS of dishes. I like dishes; so much so that I have 5 sets of china and a double set of the same ironstone pattern that I bought before we were married. Can I help it that my mother-in-law liked the pattern too? Placemats and napkins and candles. I might have fewer of these if I didn't hate ironing so much. But tablecloths require ironing, as do napkins. So much easier to run out and buy a new set of placemats/ napkins at the Crate and Barrel outlet up Duke Street if we're having company. They tell me the 'bare table' look is becoming fashionable. YES!!!

Another telling observation is that there is almost no item of which I have only one. Good things come in threes around here, or multiples thereof. If one candlestick is good, six is even better. Maybe this reflects my insecurity--the fact that I always need a backup in case something goes wrong. Or maybe it's my aesthetic sense. I like the look of odd numbers of things, but almost all stuff comes in pairs. Whatever. Suffice it to say that my house right now looks like an explosion in a box factory as I inventory my life, drawer by drawer.

We took a dispiriting trip to the storage space yesterday as well. In order to hang all the framed pictures, prints, maps, posters, collages, etc, that we have accumulated, I think we'd need to rent the Louvre. And reading today in the Times about someone's father who owned a farm and a 30 000 book library, I thought, "So???" I've started waking in the night wondering where my daughter's mummified wedding dress will go, and whether there will be enough room for all my Christmas stuff, and what would they do to me if I just shoved all the boxes in storage out into the corridor at the United-Storall and walked away? Perhaps I could do a blind, grab-bag garage sale...tell the movers to deposit all our boxes (except the books, of course) on the brick patio of the new house, throw wide the gates, and sell the sealed boxes for $20 a pop. Cash, and most emphatically, CARRY. Who knows what treasures people could walk off with? And if I haven't unpacked these boxes from the last move (or maybe the one before) I obviously don't need the contents. Even I don't know what secrets they hold.

Retirement plan: Learn to use e-Bay and sell everything.

Sort of

We are about to enter the next phase of messing with real estate. As soon as all appraisals are in and all systems are go, as soon as we pass the brief but distressing "Omigod, what have we done?" period, once we have reached the conclusion that we have no more control over the situation than Indiana Jones had over that boulder that was gaining on him...we arrive at the packing stage. Known in our frequently-moved household as the "where-the-hell-did-I-put-that?" phase.

After our first couple moves, I came to the realization that, in every transfer of household goods, something disappears forever. I now figure that it's sort of a sacrifice to the gods: a gift of appeasement so that our moving truck doesn't drive off a cliff, or spontaneously ignite. I imagine that somewhere in the dark and spooky depths of every moving company, there is a shrine, decorated with the objects that somehow escaped from the truck: a sort of 'Island of Lost Toys' with no benevolent Santa to rescue them.

In an attempt to minimize those escapees, I always engage in my personal favorite exercise in futility. I plan. Yes, I am one of those people who measures rugs and furniture and has even been known to tape out furniture footprints at the new house to assure myself that certain pieces will fit. I figure out ahead of time where everything will go--and try to color-code my boxes and furniture to match the color-coded rooms in the new house so that the movers will know (even if I and my clipboard are otherwise occupied) where to deposit the items they are unloading. In the interest of sanity preservation, boxes are labeled with approximate contents. Anyone who has dealt with mover-labeled boxes will understand. Once you have opened a box labeled "DR dishes" only to find a lone stray saucer and the contents of your under-the-kitchen-sink cabinet, you tend to distrust those packers.

In this move, however, we are emptying not only our current house, but the storage space containing the detritus of past moves: all the stuff that didn't quite make it through these doors, but was deemed worthy of saving. A new chandelier that was never hung. An incredible number of cane-back chairs (which apparently multiply like rabbits in storage spaces). Boxes and boxes of books, labeled with their room of origin three houses ago. Christmas decorations that migrate in and out each year, along with the everyday decorative items they have supplanted. Forgotten treasures, like the half-moon mirror that used to grace the sofa wall of our family room--when we HAD a family room. I am forced to remember not only the contents of our current rooms, but that of past houses--and then map those boxes to new rooms in the new place. Complexity--and possibly chaos--reigns.

And yet, I keep at it, poring over the floorplan (whose dimensions are at odds with the property description on the same page of the brochure) and trying to imagine colors and locations and sizes of rooms and windows and doors and built-ins, so that I can integrate our pieces into the plan. I despair of ever fitting all the boxes of books onto the shelves available, of ever clearing all the virtually inaccessible corners of this house and then finding space for what I discover there. I wake in the middle of the night, asking myself questions about hoses and shut-off valves and where to put the trashcans.

It is--in short--the typical interim period when we can't get out of the old house or into the new, when all there is to do is worry that something will go wrong with one or both transactions. Planning and all the rest of it keeps those fears at bay. After 37 years, after all the moves we've made, all the deals, all the paperwork, all the agonies of waiting during that time, we sort of know that it will probably work out. Key word: "sort of". Sufficient to the day is the worry thereof.

By Fourth of July, we'll be...somewhere.

Waiting

I am not very good at waiting. From standing in line at the grocery store to sitting in traffic, from anticipating Christmas to planting spring bulbs in the garden, I am a person of little patience. I want to see results, reactions, closure, whatever. And I want it now.

This does not particularly suit me well for real estate transactions. Crafting a sales contract, dotting i's and crossing t's in a listing agreement, closing loopholes, creating others...observing the traditional dance moves of buying a house is painfully slow. Sign and initial, initial and sign endless documents that one person makes endless copies of, then passes to another person who reviews, copies, sends to clients so that they can sign and initial, initial and sign ad infinitum. Then copy again and send back to the originator to alter, initial and sign and start the entire process yet again.

When everyone tires of writing their names and initials in appropriate boxes and lines, we move on to the financial forms. More initials, more signatures, this time with numbers and percentages sprinkled through the pages. Then, whole pages of numbers assigning dollars to specific tasks and specific people at specific times. Wait to sign, wait to initial, wait for checks, wait for loan officers, wait for underwriters, wait for papers to be copied or signed or rendered useless. They should stop calling us 'clients' and start calling us 'patients'.

There are some advantages, I'll own. By doing this, we create a financial snapshot for ourselves and can see where we are. We establish some quality time together, digging through files and papers and assorted boxes of information. We spend more time at home waiting for the phone to ring, telling us of success or failure or yet another postponement while we await the arrival of yet another piece of paper or two. I've reduced my internet time by at least half. Real life is more challenging than any virtual world.

Success?

All the effort paid off. We sold our house in less than a week, making all the sturm und drang worthwhile. One would like to say that we can now breathe again, but that would be premature. The swift passage of our house from 'on the market' to 'sold' now necessitates an equally swift purchase of a suitable abode, so that we will have somewhere to live when our purchasers take possession. Which simply means that our frenetic activity has just entered a different arena.

Now, instead of creating an alternative reality for potential purchasers, we must see through what others have created for us. Wait a minute, sir! Where is the trashcan in this kitchen? And what is that chair doing, hiding in this closet? Do you mean to say that there isn't ROOM for it out here in the open? You can't fool me; I can see that that bed in the master bedroom is a double bed and not a queen-size. I know it makes the room look bigger, but I also know that I own a queen-size bed and that it has to fit here. I see that the brick patio is weed-free. Does that mean it's set in concrete, or (more likely) that someone has spent hours weeding and followed that up with a walloping dose of Round-Up? Here I am, creator of dream worlds, dragging agents, kicking and screaming, back to the ultra-real world of the potential purchaser. How far is it to the grocery store? And I don't mean from the edge of the development...I mean from MY front door. (Two blocks from the former; more like 5 from the latter.) I can't help noticing that the uber-efficient zone heating/cooling system looks a bit long in the tooth. How old is this unit?

And so it goes...the creation and destruction of real estate-selling myths. Our minds have to entertain and distinguish between several realities, and choose which to believe. I believe I will take a nap.

Selling the Dream

A good friend once said to me that when you sell a house, you are not selling reality, but a dream. The past two weeks have been no dream, but a nightmare instead. Fortunately, I don't have to sell those two weeks...only their end result.

I am afraid that my spouse and I would have been quite comfortable in the Victorian age. We instinctively clutter our habitat with whatever we are interested in at the time. Our house bulges with maps and books and wooden ware and Noah's arks and magazines and paper and dishes and candlesticks. Surfaces are littered with any and all of these, and boxes and bags bloom in stray corners. Laptops lie where they are most used; the afternoon mail occupies a corner of the dining room table. To eat dinner, I need to rearrange the piles of 'To Do" items that accumulate in the one place where we know they will be seen.

No more. Potential buyers apparently don't dream of our particular lifestyle, and so, for a while, we need to imitate the reality they (and we, were we to be honest) dream of. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Sleek bookcase shelves, with a smattering of books and room for well-placed objets d'art. A dining table, ready for setting. A kitchen where the maid (apparently) has just washed up and emptied the dishwasher, having stored all appliances in the ample cabinetry. A cozy fireplace, a reading nook, newspapers and magazines that miraculously disappear as soon as they are read, without spending a week or so in the limbo of an ugly recycling box parked in the hall. A cat curled on the windowsill who doesn't require unsightly kitty litter or scratching post. Man, if I could find a place like that, I'd buy it too.

And so, we have spent two weeks boxing up the books and the other excesses with which we've populated our life. We've moved furniture and doo-dads and pictures and papers until we are not sure we know where ANYTHING is. We've rearranged, reduced, and rethought every aspect of the house until it isn't really ours anymore. At times, it seems as if we have moved everything we own into storage: not an easy task. Our agent approves--up to a point. I think she would prefer that we move out bag and baggage, sleep on the floor in sleeping bags, and roll even those up each morning and put them in the car. We have taken firm stances on some things. No, I will not pack up my cookbooks in their entirety. No, we will not take off the top portion of the hutch in our entry. No, we will not empty the storage spaces in the house. But, for the most part, we oblige her in the interest of selling the place. After two intense weeks of preparation, it goes on the market tomorrow.

For sale: charming home in a secluded location in the heart of Old Town. Convenient to all, walking distance to shops, restaurants, trolley and Metro. Fireplace. Light and bright. Treehouse views from third floor, lovely walled garden. Dreamers wanted.

Sandwiches

It’s almost Mothers’ Day and I’m making sandwiches. Not for my family. I have long since graduated from the PB&J level of nightly lunch preparation. Today I am preparing 25 sandwiches for the homeless.

It started when I was still working, and hadn’t the time to do much in the way of volunteering at church. Helping with the congregation’s commitment to provide sandwiches for the homeless meant making 25 sandwiches once every couple of months, and making sure they reached the church’s refrigerator before 9:30 AM on the designated day. That was easy.

Today, though, it’s hard. With Mothers’ Day looming on the horizon, I am thinking, as I lay out 25 slices of bread on my counter, of the mothers who must have done this long ago for the same people. I am thinking of the mothers among them who performed this quotidian task—and now lack the wherewithal to do it for themselves. I am remembering the thousands of times I opened my lunchbox and groaned at my mother’s bologna –with- too- much- mayonnaise and her requisite piece of cake (whose icing always stuck to the wax paper) instead of the far more desirable Tasty-Kake I coveted. How many of the people eating my homely ham and cheese wish that it were something else, a remembered sandwich from their childhood? How many had no mom-packed lunches in their past? How many had no mom at all?

It isn’t a great act of charity, twenty-five ham and cheese sandwiches this week before Mothers’ Day. But as I slide them into individual plastic sandwich bags, I remember what it means to have a mom, what it means to BE a mom. I remember that I am one of the lucky ones—with a home and a family to care for. I am lucky enough to make a sandwich or two.

In honor of Poem in Your Pocket Day

Adverbial Ketchup


Assemble some words, all your favorite words,
your biggest and best, most delicious of words;
Grind them with verb sauce, and odd punctuation,
Pepper with rhyme (to suit the occasion)
Then, if you will, some adjective yeast,
To bubble and build to a metaphor feast:
Rising unchecked o’er the brim of your brain,
spilling, and spreading, again and again--
poetry dough to be punched, to be kneaded,
to be stretched, to be strained, to be coaxed, to be wheedled,
and shaped at long last into poetry stuff,
some rich with thought and some with pure fluff,
but poems in makeable, bakeable form,
wrenched from the oven-- and read while still warm.

Mary McElveen
April 2010