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I HAD A MOVING EXPERIENCE TODAY.


Well, it wasn't actually as moving for me as it was for friends of mine who are packing up more than a few carloads of furnishings and leaving the house in which they've lived for nearly thirty years. They're transitioning into a newer, smaller place...and you can imagine that involves some extreme sorting of accumulated stuff, a lot of moving decisions.








So I got the delightful job (I believe I just assumed the role) of "Kitchen Move-in Consultant" in spite of being a rank amateur --as opposed to the other friend who was also serving in this capacity, and who has herself packed up and moved a total of (gasp) thirteen times.

Mae and I, in our joint advisory role, could offer opinions about the wisdom of hanging onto various items we helped unpack, or about the proper spot to store the ice bucket or the seldom-used stack of plastic containers; but if our mutual friend--who'd be pulling open these cupboard doors and rooting around in these kitchen drawers for many meals to come--had other ideas, we could easily acquiesce. After all, as we well knew and so Nora said: As soon as we left, she'd simply undo whatever wasn't to her liking. See how that made the job a piece of cake for us consultants? We could just enjoy ourselves and sneak small odds and ends into unlikely places.


And here's the thing: When we had reduced that one carload of full boxes marked "kitchen" to empty ones, and I thought about the packing of those boxes and the many other boxes bound for other rooms and all the what-to-save and what-goes-where decisions this involved, I truly was quite moved by the very real moving experience.




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