The Way to Pack for a Move

John and I laughingly share a fantasy of what our next move will look like. 

We began this little fantasy when we moved into this house thirty years ago. We didn't have funds left to rent a truck and all the friends we had were suddenly perpetually busy when we were ready to move.  So, we came up with a routine.  Every night I'd load up my SUV as full as I could get it with boxes and things.  Then I'd drive the 50 miles to work.  When work was done, I'd drive the hour here and unload the boxes, drive the 30 miles home and after supper I'd load the SUV all over again, then pack more boxes.   After three weeks we were down to all but the sofas and bookcases, washer and dryer.  And I was DONE.

It was a long and tedious process, and I was exhausted by the end of it.  That's when we started our fantasy about our next move.

Our fantasy goes like this:  I'll pack my most favorite books, my computer, the keyboard and music books.   He'll pack his music and guitar.  He says we won't even pack underwear after that.  "We'll just buy new when we get there.  There's nothing we can't buy somewhere...And just think how easy it will be to unpack!"  

We are not moving, at least not to our knowledge.  But this stage of life feels a good bit like moving to me. 

Years ago, when I was caring for Daddy, he often had a program on his television called "Starting Over."  Ilyana Vanzant was one of the personal life coaches that worked with the women who came to the house to leave behind their old paths and forge new ones.  One episode has stuck with me harder than all the others.   Ilyana packed a suitcase and then sent the young woman out on the street to walk to a destination far away.  Everywhere she went, that packed suitcase went, too.  Up hill, down hills, standing at bus stops and having to lug it up and down steps, across rough terrain and parking lots and finally back home again.  The woman was exhausted.

In the end, when she returned to the group home, Ilyana stood by as the suitcase was unpacked.  Ilyana named each heavy object as it was removed.  She called them by the name of a hurt the woman had revealed in counseling sessions.  "This is what you keep hauling around with you everywhere you go.  When do you stop packing up all this stuff for the journey ahead of you?" she asked.  The girl sat down and wept as though she'd never stop.  That segment was so powerful to me that I sat down and sobbed, too.  I was packing a whole lot of hurts and resentments and had been hauling them around far too long.

I was in the process of unpacking those things when I watched that episode.  In the twenty years since, I have unpacked a whole lot more stuff that served no purpose other than to weigh me down.  

All I am packing for this part of my life journey are bits and pieces I'd forgotten were part of the me God made part of me from the beginning.  And the good memories and sweet things and the things that were wonderful and full of wonder.  Picking them up feels right.  Each one brings with it a sense of recognition and joy.  And peace.  

I look in the mirror and feel I might know the woman before me.  I find I am liking her very well.  It's not an ego thing; it's recognition of the 'kindred spirit' sort.  It's like greeting a long-lost friend, the sort that you pick up conversation right where you are as though you never stopped talking twenty or thirty years ago and you find you still have that connection, heart to heart and mind to mind.  

I'm packing for a better life...