Happy Noises

There are ballerinas living in the dorm right now. The Bossov Ballet Theatre runs out of MCI and they are preparing for their Cinderella performance this weekend. While carrying in our boxes, we met the Executive Director of the program, a retired colonel, who named composers and choreograhers and flitted a hand through the stuffy, dorm air like he was conducting. He told us the girls could be boisterous and that although it might get a little loud, it's all "happy noises."

First, the girls discovered Darby. He sat in the shady, green-like-Girl-Scout-uniforms grass outside  while Jared, a friend and Grampie carted boxes and furniture. Every time I'd look for Darby, there would be a small harem of long-haired girls in tiny shorts gushing over him. He leaned his head into their hands, basking in the glory. Even when I locked him inside, they saw him through the screen sighing, "Ohhhh, puuupppppy." And Darby, pretending to be bashful, would rise slowly from his pose of the child position and stretch into a downward dog, yawning. The girls would squeal and he'd amble to the screen to be adored up close.

Yesterday, as I washed our new silverware and colanders and Jared assembled bedside lamps, the girls watched Chicago in the main room. One girl said, "You haven't seen Chicago???" to another and they rewound and replayed "He Had it Comin'" several times. Boys in sweat pants and graphic T-shirts walked by our window occasionally and, minutes later, the girls giggled.

This morning, Henry and I watched the girls race to practice with high buns, black leotards and pale skin-colored tights. They scurried like cartoon mice. Henry yelled "HI!" out the windows, but they couldn't see him through the screen though they turned around, scanning the windows, waving absently to the high, unfamiliar voice. They look like they are nine to eleven years old, but they are probably closer to fifteen or sixteen. They walk with more confidence than I had at their age, no matter what age that is, and their thin, wraparound sweaters are tied with lazy, casual knots in the smalls of their backs.

I don't know how many, if any, of them will stay for the year. The ballet program is ongoing, but this is just summer camp. I wonder if my dorm of girls will be like them, flitty and smiling. Happy noises. But these girls are committed to something. It is fun (hopefully) and they chose to come here (hopefully). My girls, who'll arrive throughout August, will be high schoolers who'll want to sleep in, visit instead of do homework and clomp around the building. They'll fight over washing machines and which movie to watch on the big TV. They may still like my dog, but may not like me. They'll sometimes be sullen and, a moment later, laughing with friends. Some days they will hate their clothes and their body and nearly everything about themselves. Others they will be proud of a grade or like the way a pair of pants falls on their body, but not say a word about either.

I'm glad to have a week to settle in before work starts. Although I am looking forward to the girls' arrival. They will come from China and Japan and Russia and other places, maybe feeling strange and different and weird. What I wish I could tell them, what I wish I knew then, is that everyone feels a little foreign and out of place. But I wouldn't have believed it then either.

So You Think You Can Move

Despite the fact Jared and the truck o'our things left yesterday, the house still looks full. And despite the fact that the house still looks full, I'm watching So You Think You Can Dance and blogging. I should be sorting through stuff. Or at the very least throwing it all away. Or I could just throw the word "should" away. When I feel the overwhelming panic of forgetting something crucial or not getting it all done, I push my breath through my mouth and shoulders and tell myself On Tuesday I will get on a plane and take with me what I take with me. And all will be okay.

Tomorrow morning my brother and I are going to Carmax to get their quote on my beloved Yaris. I honestly love that car. I've never been attached to a car before. But the Yaris and I have had five solid years together. Road trips to Santa Barbara, Yuma and Libby, Montana. It's the first car I picked out and bought on my own. I've moved so many times with it's deceptively spacious hatchback. And I'm months away from paying it off. BUT... we don't need two cars. And a two-door car doesn't work too well as the only car of a family with a car seat. I looked into shipping it: $1200. A friend offered to drive it: 3,300 miles and $500ish in gas. And then it's there and what then? I've researched Kelly Blue Book and I could get $9k for it... if I want to go through the selling of it. That could pay for our move and much more. Should I? What about? What if? Then what? But? On Tuesday I will get on a plane and take with me what I take with me. And all will be okay.

I also feel oddly calm. Maybe the repetition of the mantra is actually working. Or maybe I'll be forced to have the passenger next to me on the plane hold my energy-that-never-stops son while I sob all the way to Atlanta. It could go either way. Henry's presence often requires emotions that I don't necessarily have at the time. Patience when I want to sleep. Joy when I want to cry. Energy when I want to be watching TV. Regardless, Jared will meet us at the little Portland airport and Henry will say "Hi Pop" and all will be okay.

Waiting for Bumpy

I’m sitting in the cell phone lot at the airport waiting for the text from my father to tell me his new, non-malfunctioning plane has landed. And I will take him home to see his grandson who, outside of Skype, he hasn’t seen since late December. They will spend the weekend reuniting while Jared and I pack. Because we haven’t started packing at all. And the truck comes on Tuesday. And leaves the next day with however much stuff we’ve squeezed in there, packed or not. And it will drive across the country with 95% of our things until we follow by car and plane within the week. And the overwhelmingness I feel is overwhelming.

But before all that, right now, I’m waiting for a text. I’m feeling the sun beat on my right arm and listening to planes land. I’m trying to ignore the shaved head, tattooed white guy in the black Jeep next to me who sporadically sits up from his reclined seat and stares at me. I’m texting my friend who suggests I talk loudly about Bumpy coming because it could sound like a gangsta name if you didn’t know it’s Henry’s nickname for his grandpa. And the man is out of his car now, standing on the charcoaly, so-hot-it’s-soft pavement to put his shirt on, sit on his front bumper and smoke a cigarette.

I hear cellphones ringing and beeping around me and cars pull out of the parking lot to pick up their people. In a week and a half, I’ll be on a plane with Henry. Even though he’s flown a lot for an almost two-year-old, I’ve never flown with him alone. I’ve never changed his diaper on a plane or in an airport. I’ve never managed luggage and him. These are the things I get caught up in. These are the thoughts that twist behind my ears.

Not the fact that we’re leaving. That once that plane lands, I will live in Maine. And I won’t work at San Diego Writers, Ink and I won’t work at Words Alive and I won’t live in the home that I moved into (for the first time) when I was 13. And I’m not sure how to live inside being incredibly excited to live somewhere, but in denial about getting there. That being there means not being here. That unpacking means packing. That arriving means departing. The opposites existing together, at the same time.

So I will pick up my dad.

And I will pack the house.

And I will have our “we got married and we’re moving to Maine party.”
And I will find somewhere for our cat to live.
And I will sell my car (maybe).
And then I will get on a plane.
And then I will live in Maine.

Boxes.

Yesterday I hosted my last Brown Bag at San Diego Writers, Ink. My first prompt was “Boxes” and here’s what I wrote:

I’ve left my parents’ house over five times and each time boxes stayed behind. Inside, my 8^th grade yearbook where the boy I thought I had a crush on wrote a message in thick sharpie on the front cover which, at the time, I thought meant he liked me and now I see that he liked himself. The medical information book my grandmother gave me for one of my teen birthdays that I used to look up photos of rashes and walk my symptoms through bubbled-diagnostic charts. Boxes of accumulated T-shirts, Splash Mountain pictures at Disneyland, letters from high school pen pal, old purple and flowered journals, awards from the library for summer reading programs. Boxes of Christmas ornaments, smashed bows and stained tree skirts.

And this time, when I move, whoever lives in the house won’t keep my boxes. They have to go with me to Maine or to the dump. I’ve pushed past some of my sentimentality (paying $356/foot of truck space encourages sparse, nomadic tendencies), but I don’t know what my son will want of my childhood.

Behind my license in my wallet, I carried around a tiny headshot of my mother at age 12 with barely red hair and a sailor suit, freckles like pollen on her pink face. I read and reread her middle-school journals and held onto her embroidered hippie jackets.

As a boy, will my son be as fascinated with his mother’s boxes? Will he want to see the menu I created for “Wolfgang Huck’s” as part of my Junior year English class project on Huck Finn. Will the unbound scrapbook I made from my first two years of college and the album from my third in Florence be interesting to my boy who’s currently infatuated with bugs, lizards and trucks?

I’m tempted to call my brother and ask what he liked to know about Mom. My husband, a sensitive father and mild-hoarder like me, says of course Henry will want all these trinkets of Mama. And of course he’ll study them and pick some to display in his room. The boxes I need to leave behind hang on me more than those I need to pack.

Dear Mr. King

Saturday night we hosted Scary Movie Night. SMN started when a couple friends and I were talking about how our friends don’t like watching scary movies. We bonded over the desire to be terrified. Since then, usually once a month, one of five couples hosts a theme night. We’ve eaten fava beans and cianti with Hannibal Lecter, pea soup with Reagan and New England boiled dinner in the Dead Zone. We rallied the troops together for our last SMN. And because Jared makes crispy, greasy, excellent fried chicken and gooey, saltine-topped, homemade macaroni and cheese so we opted for a Southern theme this time. For the movie, I’d never seen Deliverance and from what I’d hear it sounded full of heebie jeebies. Apparently, says Blockbuster, it is an action film that few in the group wanted to watch.

This worked out well because when you aren’t going to see a good group of friends for a long while, you don’t need to watch legendary, banjo-strumming, back-country attack scenes on your last night.

Instead, we ate chicken and biscuits and coleslaw and mac & cheese and corn and salad (the non-Southern kind with cranberries and no mayonnaise) with strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert. And they toasted our new adventures with mix-matched glasses of champagne and sparkling strawberry lemonade. We balanced our paper plates on our laps and talked about what we are going to do in Maine. Then we watched Henry and his 4-yr-old friend, Lily, build towers of cardboard blocks (well, she did the building and Henry did the knocking over) while the adults restrained from giving architectural advice. We chatted about the news of the dingo, reviews of the Rufus Wrainright concert and, towards the end while everyone was gathering their things, plans for the next SMN. When the next host asked if anyone had seen the newest Sherlock movie, I realized I didn’t get a vote. I told them they were all required to come to Maine once a year so we could host still. “Yeah right,” they said and laughed. I joked that I would invite Stephen King and we’d watch one of his movies in his honor. They looked a little more serious at that and said they’d fly for him.

 I’m going to write him a letter.

Boxes for Air

Driving to work on Tuesday, I saw a PACE passenger shuttle like the ones that used to pick my Uncle Michael up for doctors’ appointments and health stuff on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The shuttle sighting was a reminder of all the things I won’t see in Maine that make me think of my grandmother and uncle, who lived together their last decades and died within days of each other over two years ago. It’s a time that feels like it didn’t happen because Henry was barely a bump and I barely remember not being Henry’s Mom. Not because life started with him or I was incomplete without him, but more that I haven’t slept much in the last two years and my memory is suffering.

For the last year, we’ve been living in my parents’ house, down the street from the house my grandparents owned for fortyish years. The house I went to after school during elementary and high school, to wait with my grandparents until my parents came home. My grandfather and I would watch the Golden Girls and my grandmother would take my money after beating me at gin rummy. There used to be a deck in the backyard that overlooked the canyon and freeway. My six-grade science project on water quality based on the proximity to pollution consisted of glasses of water in their backyard, inside and front yard that I would take drops of and look at under a telescope and then draw the squiggly blotches of “pollution.” The highlight for me was decorating the 3-fold foam board with cut-out semi-trucks. This is the house where my uncle hung out in the back TV room and shouted the answer to final Jeopardy down the hall to whoever was watching in the front living room. This was the house that always had chocolate in jars and orange juice and white albacore tuna. This was the house I lived in when Henry was born. Where I went into labor in my mother’s rocking chair in that front living room while watching a Hugh Grant movie.

This is the house I walk past every night with my husband and my son on our way to the park. And half of my childhood is looming there behind the windows that never have lights in them anymore. And that’s just my grandparent’s house! There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of my childhood lurking around San Diego, like ashy remnants from fires. My high school of white buildings on a cliff over the freeway. My grade school next to church with tolling bells. The park where I learned to ride my bike and performed an innocent dance to a mildly inappropriate Whitney Houston song at a party for my father’s 35^th birthday. The hill where I used my heels on pavement to stop my Big Wheel from crashing. The mountain I spent over a decade of holiday weekends camping at. The El Torito where we went after I graduated high school and I wore my first little black dress and felt pretty without my braces. The house on the canyon where I spent Thursday nights for almost five years huddled with other writers who told me when I wasn’t funny and when I was trying too hard with my words. The bar on Clairemont Mesa Blvd. where I took the stand-up comedy class with the friend who started out as a grumpy girl with a frantic dog. The balcony of the apartment where my husband proposed and we watched a family of raccoons shimmy out of a bush and down the sidewalk to the carport. The movie theater where I worked when Run Lola Run came out and I took pictures with co-workers who weren’t really friends, except that we were all wearing red wigs. The hospital where I was born and 30 years minus a month and three weeks later my son was born. The zoo where we go several times a week and it seems like there is always a baby giraffe.

And I’m realizing that living in Maine means NOT living in San Diego. People have asked if I know that it snows there and if I like lobster. But they don’t know to ask if I know that my grandmother has never been there. There is nothing of her there except what I bring. Except what I can remember or fit in our five designated feet of ABF moving truck. Except what I write down about her and send to my mom in sporadic emails that I can picture her reading in her Southeastern Alaska Island office with the Klawock River lapping out her window. And my grandmother passes like a wind between us. Something only we can feel in the windy ways that mothers and daughters feel things. Because all of my memories I can rethink or write down or forget, but to hold on to my grandmother feels like air in my fingers. And I don’t know how to get air in the moving truck.

Booking the Truck

We’ve given ourselves the assignment of filling up our trash can for the next five weeks until we move across the country. This seemed easy when we set the goal, but twenty minutes ago the trash was empty with trash day tomorrow and it being 9:57pm at night. We aren’t allowed to eat our triple-chocolate Ghirardelli brownies or watch the newest episode of Glee Project until the can is full.

Under the sink in the hall bathroom, I find six free-with-purchase-Clinique bags with smears of brown eyeliner and blurs of eye shadow, sparkly like cement, bruising the bottom of each bag. There were backs of earrings and travel size shampoos. Baggies of Q-tips, their ends pulled and swabby. In one bag, a patent leather black one with a mirror in the top, there’s a wad of cards and papers. Unfolding it, I find my first driver’s license, my driver’s ed certificate, four outdated Kaiser cards, three bank cards from incarnations of my bank that don’t exist anymore, a phone card from before my parent’s area code changed, a movie ticket stub from Napoleon Dynamite, and a dollar bill from my grandfather where he’d underlined In God We Trust and written Jesus Loves You in his squat, all caps, font. I’m amazed not only by my apparent hoarder tendencies, but by the grouping of these items. That seemingly at one point they felt connected to me, whether in their perceived importance or maybe there was some other commonality I’ve since forgotten. Once I gather all the half-empty lotion bottles, hand soap refills and cheap shampoo, I dump them in the trash bag and head outside. 

In the garage, my husband is sorting through a large plastic storage tub. He’s found his version of a stack of cards showing me his last Maine driver’s license that expired over seven years ago and a handful of hemp necklaces held together with a karabiner. He puts them in the garage sale pile pointing out the details of the glass beads, saying people will recognize quality handiwork.  He tells me I should be proud of him for purging so much. Purging is our big word these days. I see half of the tub is cleared and the other half with recently re-packaged boxes and stuff. Getting rid of half won’t cut it, but this is just our first round. It feels like American Idol. We’re just doing auditions at this point and all the decent singers are put through. Once the truck is in our driveway in a month, let’s hope America’s voting will be more decisive.

We finally ordered (scheduled) the moving truck yesterday. After a lot of hemming and hawing about what would be the best method to get a bunch of stuff across the country in the cheapest way possible. In the end, I posted the question on Facebook and we went with the suggestions. I called ABF movers, the 18-wheelers who section off their trucks for cross-country moving people and you only pay for what you use. On the phone, I talked to Ronald who had a southern accent, even saying y’ll several times. I explained what we were looking for and he asked some questions. $3,300 minimum for five feet of truck space. Based on their online estimated-space-your-stuff-will-take-up calculator, we’ll need seven. $356 per additional foot, Ronald told me. I started thinking more of what we can leave. After the phone call, although the price makes me feel slightly nauseous, I felt a bit more settled because at least we have a truck, a method to move, and a date. It will come on July 10 and leave on the 11^th. Jared will leave by the 12^th, driving his car with Darby as his passenger. I will fly with Henry on the 16^th or 17^th and we’ll all meet in Maine. This is a plan. It feels secure. Settled.

When we were walking that night around the park with Henry wrapped in his pale-blue and brown, paw-print blanket and Darby running across the grass chasing rabbits, Jared said, “What if we only take what we can fit in our two cars?”

There is an appeal to this idea. Starting over completely. Not charging $4,452 to our credit cards. Not having to Tetris in all our stuff into 5-7 feet of truck. But simultaneously, this did not feel secure. This does not feel settled. Not that a cross-country move from San Diego to small-town central Maine is supposed to be a cinch, but we had a plan. We made a reservation.

This new idea made me angry. I noticed the dog was nowhere in sight and I yelled for him to come.

“Dabby! Come!” Henry’s little voice shouted from the stroller, slurred through his pacifier.  

“Henry, don’t yell at Darby,” I chided, stomping across the grass, listening for Darby’s tags. “Darby!” I yelled again, being the model parent that I am. When Darby does not show up after my shouting and Henry’s shouting, I decided we will go home and leave him there. Because it was completely Darby’s fault that I was angry. Totally.

On the walk home (Darby caught up with us half-way, by the way) and for the majority of the next 24 hours, I pictured our two small cars and what we could fit in them. I imagined Henry’s room in the apartment we are moving to, subtracting his crib and carved, wooden, goose lamp. And while I could wrap my head around not having his thick, red wood, converts to a toddler bed crib, or leaving our less than two years old mattress set, I couldn’t let go of the wooden rocking chair my mother got when my brother was born. The rocking chair I’ve spent what feels like days in since Henry was born. In fact, where I spent hours of labor before he was born. One of the only pictures of me big-pregnant is the day he was born as I rocked in the chair. The chair my father bought in Washington and refinished for my pregnant mother, both of them thousands of miles away from their families, having their first child. And now, thousands of miles away from my parents and Jared’s parents, we’ve both rocked with our first child. His feet push through the rungs of the arms now, and he can climb into it to play trucks, but it’s still where I nurse him to sleep. The solid back sloping up with swirls in the wood like half-carved petals. I cannot picture a home without this.

On the next night, earlier tonight, when we went for our walk I tell Jared I’ve thought about it. Considered the allure of taking only the content of two tiny cars and driving across the country with our almost 2-year-old. But I can’t do it. There are a few items that won’t fit and I struggle to make a picture of a home without them. He’s surprised I considered it. I’m pretty sure he thought, based on my reaction, there was no budging.

So, with our plan planned again, we circled the park. The dog stayed in sight. The world was better.

Until I got home and looked under the sink and realized our American Idol moving was just beginning and we’re going to have to go through several rounds of eliminating weirdoes/weird crap before we can make it to Hollywood/Pittsfield.