My best efforts might not be enough this time
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- February 17, 2024
- 298
Like most things in life, relocating from any distance carries with it a certain amount of risk; I mean there are lots of moving parts.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist a little innocuous wordplay.
But it’s true. No matter how much bubble wrap you use or the amount of clothing you haven’t worn since high school you stuff in and around your valuables, some things are not going to make it.
Let me stress this at the outset — what follows is in no way intended as criticism aimed at or an indictment of the very capable independent contractor my wife and I hired to manage our move.
On the contrary, he was a model of efficiency, the epitome of professionalism, a guy we came to trust over the days and weeks we spent putting together the kind of audacious travel plans others in the business would likely have balked at, taking a pass on it all.
“Lemme get this straight,” one of them might have said, staring at the hundreds of albums, more than a thousand books, not to mention 23 years-plus of assorted detritus we’d accumulated since the dawn of the 21st century. “You wanna move all this stuff from the coast to Northeast Ohio … in one truck … in two days … in January?”
“Can you do it?” I might have asked, citing a price we could afford.
“Listen, pal,” he’d most likely have replied. “You might wanna have a garage sale. Or maybe just haul most of it to the junk yard.”
Because it’s probably true.
A lot of my possessions lack, to a stranger’s eyes, any real value.
They represent a life spent on the fringes of conventional wisdom, years and years dedicated to the pursuit of individual iconoclasm.
I’ve always been an adherent of Joni Mitchell’s dire warning, the one that goes, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
My wife is much more pragmatic, which is a blessing because I tend toward the Peter Pan notion of never growing up. She’s also very good at streamlining, something that gives me actual pain when I witness her cold-blooded (but necessary) belief system in action.
“You have to hang onto that matchbook,” I said as she blithely tossed it into a trash bag designated for the dump. “It’s from ... ”
“I know where it’s from,” she said, “and you know where it’s going. Now make up your mind about that TV that doesn’t work.”
Her tone wasn’t harsh. Far from it. She was speaking the truth, something I’ve always reserved for myself, often to my own regret.
When you take on a monumental move like the one we’ve just attempted and are still in the midst of completing, you have to expect a certain amount of disappointment. It’s part of the deal.
The first casualty of breakage was a glassware set my wife’s mother had collected, something with immense sentimental value.
Next to bite the dust was a ceramic bookend, part of a baseball/football set given to me by a favorite aunt when I was 8.
Then we discovered that a soup tureen, which we received as a wedding gift, had been smashed, but I think I can super glue it.
But the worst of it — and keep in mind we still have dozens of boxes to unpack in our heatless cellar — was the Norfolk pine.
As God as my witness, though, I will do all I can to keep it alive.
Again, though, this is not to impugn the mover, who told me at the very beginning of the process that, as a rule, he didn’t do plants, especially tall ones, the kind that are 5 feet tall and still growing.
After listening to me explain — well, beg — for minutes on end how it would mean a lot to me if he could just find a way to take it home with us, he said, “Maybe I can find a spot for it at the end.”
Wrapped up like a mummy, in yards of swaddling and padding, it made the journey apparently intact, but then something bad began to happen. In Carolina it had stood proud and strong in the sunroom, a lovely glass-walled place that gave it light and life.
Here, however, seemingly healthy branches started falling off, silently hitting the bedroom floor, to my estimation, still green and healthy and vibrant. I couldn’t understand it. We’d kept the thermostat at 67, so it wasn’t like it was outside in zero degrees.
One became three became six and then nine, and all of a sudden, I knew it was not adapting well to its new environment and, worse, that I had no idea how to reverse an obvious ominous trend.
I’ve had that Norfolk pine in my care for more years than I care to remember, though I know it was a Christmas gift from my sister. It was no more than a seedling back then, a sad wisp of a thing, and there were times I thought I’d failed in my primary mission.
But over and over again, it rallied, gaining enough height and breadth to carry its own array of ornaments and lights and tinsel.
We’ve modified its place in the house, trying to save it with more light and less watering, which can be too much of a good thing, and my hope is that as the weather warms up, it’ll take to the Ohio spring sunshine and find itself with a new lease on life, just like me.
Mike Dewey can be reached at 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH, or at Carolinamiked@aol.com, where things seem to grow naturally.