moving hell

I’ve just moved house for the first time in a decade. Still in the thick of it. I’m bad at moving, which is weird because I used to be good at it — too good for my own good, in fact.

Excluding interim sublets, bedsits and stints with friends or relatives, I moved more than twenty-five times between the age of eight and eighteen. It wasn’t very glamorous — my family wasn’t in the foreign service or on the lamb from the law — just a lot of bouncing around the small towns and big cities of southern Ontario. Like most kids who move a lot, I didn’t go far.

You get used to it. The boxes and the bubble wrap. The Billy bookshelves and the little bag of Allen keys. I looked forward to ordering pineapple pizza and eating it on the floor, straight out of the box. The look of pure relief on Mum’s face when she discovered I’d remembered, while packing up the kitchen cutlery, to put the corkscrew in her purse. The bag of old sheets we’d thumb tack over the bedroom windows so we could sleep, pretending we’d replace them with proper curtains, knowing full well we would not. There’s a rhythm to middle class itinerancy — the life of rolling rentals and short term sublets, broken leases and relationships. Things that magically cohere only to predictably become unstuck. The downside of constant motion is obvious but the upside — an imperviousness to homesickness — is rarely discussed. The knack of being able to tolerate temporary states of disorder is source of great strength, one I’ve been drawing deep on these past few nights.

The nights.

Those were the worst part, the thing I never quite got over. Specifically the confusion of the first one, the disorientation that sets in just before bed. I’d be standing in a strange unfurnished bedroom, surrounded by boxes under the glare of an overhead bulb and think, Okay, time go home. Then I’d look down at the bare coil mattress and remember, No wait. This is home. That’s my bed. The dread of that moment is something that stayed with me, haunting my bones into adulthood. It’s fixed me in places I undoubtedly should have left years before.

Moving is hell but unpacking’s the best bit. I like the promise of hanging pictures, assembling bookshelves, deciding where the plates and cups will go. Stasis is a false surety, everything is temporary. There are times for hunkering down, digging in and then there are times when you pick your moment, pull yourself up — and go.