Moving Day revised
April 20, 2002
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Homework
I woke up that fateful day to the sound of my mother going in and out constantly, the front door slammed shut once every couple minutes. She was in a great hurry to have the move done and over with. The sun hadn't been up terribly long, probably not even as long as she had been. There weren't very many people out and about yet, as it was a Saturday and a day of rest. But my mother wasn't, and being only nine years old at the time, I didn't really understand why.
I knew that we were moving to a place known as Vermont, but I didn't really understand what that meant. My mother had gone to the parents of most of my friends, getting addresses and phone numbers so that I could stay in contact with them. But I couldn't fathom why I would need them because all I had to do was walk down the street to say "Hi," right? I didn't understand until years later that I had basically snubbed all my old friends by never writing to them, even though a couple held out hope and wrote to me every week for almost six months.
My mother had had the foresight to leave out one set of clothes and enough foodstuffs for me to breakfast. So I got dressed and ate a cold meal. Then, figuring I would be helpful, I tried to carry out some of the smaller boxes. But all that did was make her irritated with me because I wasn't putting them in the right places on the truck. She huffed and told me to go do something else, anywhere else. So I slunk back up to my room to play with my toys. I had lots of toys and most of them weren't going with us. The house that we were moving to wasn't as big as the one we were in, and we were going to keep the old house anyway because it had been in the family since it had been built in the early 1830's.
I had wondered why my father wasn't there helping. Then I remembered that my parents had had a big fight on the phone the other day. My mother was angry because my dad's new boss wouldn't give him time off to help us move out there to join him. Although, if he had been there to help, my mother would have just gotten irritated with him as well because, like me, he wouldn't have put the boxes exactly where she wanted them either.
So I busied myself with my Cabbage Patch Kids. Dressing them and pretending that they were my best-friend's kids and that I was baby-sitting them, because even then I had vowed I would never have children of my own. The frequency of door slamming shut downstairs decreased as the hours slipped into early afternoon. Once I wandered downstairs to find a juice box, and noticed that the place was actually clean. There was still a lot of furniture around; we weren't even going to try to jam it all into the new little house. But it wasn't as cluttered as it had been for years because every member of my family, all three of us, were pack rats by nature. I never did find something to drink, and went back upstairs.
Eventually I grew bored with my toys. I had played with them too much in the past couple days anyway. So, I went downstairs again. I purposefully walked out the front door and marched over to where my mother was resting for a couple minutes.
"I am going to the playground." I announced.
"I think not." She replied.
"But. . ." I began.
"No, we're leaving soon. Go to the toilet and get ready to go." She said and turned away to make sure the boxes were all in place.
"But what about Harry and Eaker?" I demanded, those were our two white cats.
"Do you see them here?" She asked back. When I shook my head she said, "They are already in the new house."
"Oh." I sniffed.
I knew just what to do to get ready to go too, because we used to visit my father's mother in Florida sometimes. So I did all the things a child does to get ready for a long trip; I got lots of picture books, one or two children's chapter books, toys and whatever snacks were lying about. But I put them in the wrong vehicle. I put them in our car thinking that that was what we were taking. I hadn't realized yet that my mother was going to drive the boxvan.
"What the hell are you doing?" I could tell that she was laughing at me, but trying to sound serious.
"I am getting ready to go." I replied snootily.
"And just who do you think is going to drive you there in the car?" She was trying really hard to not laugh outright in my face at this point.
"You are." I thought it was a simple enough concept, if you want to go somewhere you take the car, period.
"We're taking the boxvan."
"The truck?" I asked, I didn't know what a boxvan was then.
"That is the boxvan, trucks are different." She replied.
"Oh."
So I moved all the stuff I had gathered to the cab of the boxvan. I found, to my displeasure, that we would be sharing the seat with a big old clock. I liked that clock and all, but it was just too big to sit up front with us, and I said as much.
"Well it can't sit in the back where it could get broken." She responded.
I guess she was right, and besides that, it was terribly entertaining on the ride to Vermont as it kept chiming whenever my mother hit 70mph on the interstate.
We were all set to go. All we had to do was make a quick sweep through the house to make sure we had everything we wanted in this trip. We made sure that all the windows and doors were locked as well. Then we got into the car and moved to join my father in a new state.
For years after that day I hated my parents for making me move. It was just a bad time in my life to move. I was of an age where I was putting some real anchors down in Geneva. It's a tough age to move at, but it turned out all right. I just can't seem to be able to get out of Vermont again. I guess once a person is in, they're in for life.
NOTE: This was an assignment for my CCV Creative Writing I online class with William Noble.
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