it happens every year

7/10/99

The last few days have been consumed by move preparations and parental phone calls. I have to keep telling myself that it’s not that they want to control the move or the wedding, just that they need an excuse to call me over and over. My mom does it like this:

Betsy: “Hello?”

Mom: “Hi, was that you?” (I normally ring the phone once and they call me back. It’s our code.)

Betsy: “Nooo....”

Mom: “Oh. Well, how are you doing?”

Truth? I’ve been calling them, too. I’ve never lived more than an hour’s drive from my parents, and now I’m about to move 900 miles away.

The rings came in today. John and I checked them to see if they fit, then when he left I had to try mine on again. What does it feel like to type with a wedding ring? What does it feel like to wave with a wedding ring? I just might get used to that feeling.

I’m reaching that point in the move where I feel the inklings of panic. The house has been torn apart, but the things aren’t in boxes yet. This happens every year. I look around and things are strewn, I can’t create order. I can’t make the mess go away. In order to pack this pile of clothes, I have to get to a certain suitcase, but the suitcase is under a pile of Wine Spectator back issues, and those all need to go in a box but I can’t use the box until I wash the dirty dishes it’s holding. The house seems huge and tiny at the same time. All around are papers, papers, papers: tax info, bills, music, school notebooks, poetry drafts. I can’t cope.

Tomorrow John and I will start the panic-mode packing process: we toss things in boxes. The only rule is to try to get the heavy stuff on the bottom. Every year I say I’m not going to do it this way again, I’m going to sort and throw out and give away and sell, and every year this happens. Monday night we’ll fight; I’ll get upset because he’s sitting with the liner notes of his new Maslanka CD while I’m “scouring and slaving” in the kitchen—it will turn ugly. The worst year, one of us stormed out. I think it was me.

We’ll stay up all night Monday, and I’ll collapse around 12. Whining. I might cry. John will singlehandedly good cop-bad cop me, trying to coax and/or force me to stay up and work. I’ll take a nap. I’ll wake up and feel guilty. And I’ll look around and fall in love with my boyfriend as I realize he’s worked all night and made everything okay.

At least this year we don’t have a deadline. In the past we’ve had that awful 9:00 am departure time, when the apartment people need to have the keys. This year we really have no obligation, just the disapproval of my parents, for not doing it the way THEY would have. (My parents haven’t moved since 1975.) We can take a nap.

Probably Monday when we disconnect the computer. If I disappear, that’s why. Shouldn’t be more than a day or two; I’ll keep the paper journal going.

Had to take down my magnetic poetry today. Some of the tastier morsels:

top sacrifice is all you ask

kiss not his naked needle

fat sacred euphonium joy

lie cat men down easy as sky

perhaps you are a wet steam child

translucent dazzle like our wild coffee pie

animal women must think for a universe of sadness

picture some red hot tuba candy