The Delicate Art of Packing Lives

Last night, my husband called me out/up (however you want to phrase it) and allowed me to see what I have been avoiding. I am like a tornado prepping for our upcoming move, and I’m pulling my kids in. “If we push too hard,” he said, referring to my current mental state of simplifying and purging, “we could make an already tough experience even tougher. We could lose them.”

It was late, long past the time that my patience runs thin and well into the time when my negativity, frustration and doomsy-ness sets in. I have learned over many years that this is not the time of day for me to have tough conversations.

He said this.

I closed my eyes and stewed.

I knew he was right, but I didn’t want him to be right.

I was pushing too hard.

I went to sleep.

Under the guise of “Boys, I just need you to meet me halfway,” I realized that what I was actually expecting was for them to fully bridge the gap from their perspective to mine. I was couching my needs in the form of questions that only had one answer - the one I wanted to hear. If I held up a toy and said, “Could we donate this?” I wanted to hear nothing other than “yes!” But the answer was rarely yes. And “no” responses sent me into a rationalizing lecture about why the item had to go. I wasn’t paying much attention to what they thought, but I was pretending that I did. If I went the route of not asking and just doing what I wanted, (as I did in the case of a certain container of lip balm), they invariably noticed the missing object and felt betrayed. “You promised that you would ask!?” That approach was not doing wonders for their trust in me.

I felt stuck, like I couldn’t win. I desperately needed to make progress, to accomplish something. But at the same time, I believe that I value my kids’ input and want them to feel that they have some agency in this major life change. Something had to give.

My boys are 8 and 11.

They have never moved.

They have no concept of what it takes to pack a house.

They are good kids who want to help.

But I wasn’t listening.

When we made this decision to move, one of our primary motivations for our timing was to afford them certain opportunities this new place offered. We saw value in attempting to view these next several years, before they leave the nest, from their perspective. We were ostensibly moving now because of them.

I had forgotten this and put blinders on. I could only see a house full of stuff and feel the overwhelm associated with what to do with it all. I was starting to wish that our stuff would spontaneously disappear. And any element of nostalgia I possess was slipping further and further away.

In the midst of feeling all of this, I was reading a craft book on writing memoir. In it, Lisa Dale Norton discusses her own desire to hold on to everything. She talks about the richness of all these objects as records of feelings, memories of a past life, fodder for writing.

“All that stuff amounts to a record of my life. The old journals, calendars, and daybooks, letters received and copies of letters sent (and now tons of electronic files of correspondence—letters and e-mails), chronicle how I lived my days, the choices I made, the feelings that rumbled through me, the places I went, the food I ate, and the friends with whom I laughed. I even have boxes of mementos—cocktail napkins, stones, pressed leaves, newspaper clippings, posters of events, movie tickets, concert programs.”

I read this and was filled with a sudden panic. “Uh-Oh?” What does it say about me as a writer, as a person, as a curator of ideas if I want none of it - the receipts, trinkets, every two-year old drawing? Should I want this stuff?

When my anxiety dissipated, I was left with the clarity that we all approach our collection of things differently. I gave myself permission to be a writer who does not collect and squirrel away all the acorns and pinecones. I was also left feeling that I could be ok with others not sharing my point of view. I realized that I had been approaching this move with an expectation that everyone in my family validate my way of thinking and adopt it for themselves. Oops…

My boys are unique humans. They are also young. They still measure their age in half years while I forget where I am in this decade. Nostalgia grips them, in their lives that harbor so much less compression than my own, far differently than it does for me. Their memories are fewer, bigger, more detailed, floating around freely and slowly. Whereas mine are more dense, smaller, packed tightly, and the rich details are attached to far fewer. Some of my memories could disappear, and I would likely never know. But they would notice a clear void if just one of their memories was to vanish.

I realize that memories aren’t reliant on our possessions, and yet some of these possessions they hold dear still feel hugely important, even if they haven’t thought of them in months. My desperate attempts to make my children unattached to material things aren’t unfounded, but perhaps they are misguided in this moment. What if I could teach this idea more gently, plant seeds instead of transplanting trees, and not push so hard in a moment of intense change.

If I truly want to meet them halfway, I must also get unstuck and start moving. When I ask questions, I need to be ok with any answer, otherwise, I can’t ask. Perhaps I can give them parameters and let them decide what stays and what gets a new home.

What I can’t do is continue on my current course. It’s simultaneously rigid and frantic. It’s stressing out everyone around me and putting a portion of my relationship with my kids in jeopardy.

So after a good night’s sleep, writing this essay, and asking my son to take ownership for something totally unrelated, I realized that I needed to do the same. I talked to my kids. I told them that I’d been a bit of a beast about this. Here I was expecting them to compromise, yet unwilling to make any of my own. I vowed to try harder.

They looked at me and said, “We get it mom, we’ll try harder too.” And my heart swelled.

Sometimes being honest is hard, rewarding, and surprising all in the same moment.

In the end, we might have a dozen or so more boxes than I would like, but keeping my kids as engaged partners through this process will be worth every single one.