Not-So-Smooth Move

For a very long time, I thought there was nothing worse in the entire world than moving.

My first experience with this phenomenon, this exchanging of a home for a house, happened the summer before 7th grade. My parents sold the farm I grew up on and bought a house a couple of miles away.

Though we were simply moving from Sharon Valley to Sharon Mountain, I felt like the balloon that was my life had burst brutally open. My barn, my swamp, my hundreds of acres of wide open playground were downsized, overnight, to an odd five.
I was a mess. An absolute mess. I wrote my parents threatening letters: How dare you take me from the only house I’ve ever known! The house that I grew up in, was taken home from the hospital to! I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!
I nicknamed it The Goodly House and glared at anyone who dared refer to it as The Old House.

It took me a few years to get over the move. Talking about The Goodly House was a very, very sensitive subject. I couldn’t even drive past it without a sinking, sentimental feeling of homesickness yanking at my heartstrings.

But, sure enough, life goes on. I survived that earth-shattering experience, and have inhabited numerous abodes since. I’m on my 6th (excluding dormitories), so I’ve obviously experienced many a move-in day.

Some moves were fairly easy...others were quite frightening. Nuclear bomb scary. Great White attack scary. Baby panda sneezing scary (you’re welcome).


(Let me just take a moment to say that I think the
crème de la crème of horrendific big-schlep nightmares was my move last year from one West Village apartment to another. And I think I can safely say all eight of us who participated in that catastrophic-doomsday-tornado agree.)

Anyway, so my buddies Ri and Michelle found themselves a mansion of a place on 11th Street. Amazing, yes. Bravo lassies! But heavy lifting + four flights of never-ending stairs + 95 degrees = holy shit. Major no dankies!
My memory-failure-of-a-mind had forgotten what moving is really like. Not so luckily, though, I was instantly reacquainted with my dormant disdain for the act of relocating.

Remembering back to that 7th grade move, I was stricken with envy for my eleven-year-old self. She had nothing to contend with but nostalgia and hurt feelings. Emotional burdens have got nothing on physical ones when it comes to changing one’s address. I can’t believe I was so upset by the idea of moving. If only my twenty-six-year-old self could have told that little girl to dry her eyes, to quit being a baby...that there are far, far worse things when it comes to Moving Day...like, say, the actual move.

The packing, the PACKING! I, apparently, am no good at that game. I never have anything packed and ready to go. But that But Michelle Carberry was an absolute pro. I mean, she should quit teaching and start her own TV show on how to pack up a house (yes that's her old room...crazy, right?)

You would think, because these lady-friends-o-mine were sooooo organized, that the loading of the truck, the unloading, and the carrying of boxes up those incessant stairs, would happen somewhat quickly.

But no. We friends, and hired movers included, were all sloths made lethargic by heat and humidity.

The heat, the heat! Those weather wardens were quite unkind. It was hot. Scorching. Sweltering. Boiling. Blistering. We’re talking a Mastiff-day-of-summer hot. Hot, hot, hot. It was one for the record books.

You could have filled a kiddie pool with our combined sweat. We were snatching up Gatorade’s like dolla bills on a New York City sidewalk.

The stairs, the STAIRS! Trip after trip after trip up unrelenting steps.

I think I can safely say that it's a truth universally acknowledged: moving suuuuuuuuuucks.

But at least I can count my lucky stars that, this time, I didn't have to unpack and set up shop.

G'luck girls!