My parents came up to help me begin moving out a few weeks ago. This is something that happens when you graduate. I mean, it happens every year, but there is a much stronger sense of finality when it happens your last semester. I have never been a clean person, and my parents know this, so I don’t think they were surprised when they arrived in my basement room and saw it lined with binders, papers, boxes, and trinkets. Before I opened the door, I warned them of the imminent disappointment in me that they would have—after all, I’d known they were coming for a week—and when I finally allowed them to look, my dad just let out a little laugh and said, “Yes, well, knew you’d been busy.”
Then the packing began. The plan was for them to take all the big things—bed, futon, foosball table, and desk. I now sleep on my futon mattresses (anyone need futon mattresses after May 16th?). They made numerous trips outside as I attempted to move enough to have sufficient room to get things out. Eventually, the plan resulted in moving numerous bags of papers, binders, and notebooks onto my bed, moving my bed closer to the futon in the narrow part of my room, transporting everything from the bed to the futon, compacting the bed and removing it and the mattress, transporting the items from the futon to the floor, then putting the futon mattresses in the area where the bed was. At one point, I stood behind the bed between it and the wall, one foot up on the mattress, bent at an awkwardly forward angle to enable the tossing of “things” to the futon.
I never throw anything away. I have an undying empathy for every object in my room—every scrap piece of paper, every broken binder, every old pair of jeans. They would feel hurt or ridiculed or shamed or worthless if I threw them away. Most everything I keep is worthless, and I should probably bring this to their attention for their own good if not for mine, but really, what a horrible note to end a relationship on. There’s also a little voice inside me saying, “I’m from the future, and I’m not going to tell you what to do, but you may or may not need this item at some point.” And then it stares at me with one eyebrow raised, waiting for me to make the wrong decision.
I’d filled an entire garbage bag before they even arrived. I’d thrown away five pairs of jeans. Five. They’d been lurking in my closet with holes in the thighs, and I’d been planning on patching them up to save money. I kept one pair with very small nickel-sized holes, but the rest really were too far gone to even want to save. They’d been living on life support on the closet shelf all year before I finally let them go.
Yet through all of this, my parents were the manifestation of patience and, well, unsurprisedness (not a word, but I liked how it fit with this sentence). They were not angry or frustrated. As I darted around the room like a squirrel moving nuts, they systematically removed item after item up the stairs, out the door, and onto either the truck bed or the trailer. Perhaps it was the realization that this was the last time they’d be moving me (which is silly, since I will more than likely employ their assistance when moving to Boston), or perhaps it was the fact that they have no more children at home and are therefore more willing to put in effort since it’s their own choice, or perhaps it was the thought that there is only one more child to move out of college now, or perhaps they are just nice people—whatever the case, there was not the usual furrowed brow and pronunciation that my room “looked like a tornado had gone through it” that usually accompanied a foray into my living space. My parents had matured and grown to understand my ways. It had only taken 22 years. Maybe, in another 22, I will finally learn theirs.
Tags: moving
