Moving, Part One
Luke and I are moving to Palm Springs. The last time I moved, twelve years ago, from Vashon Island in Washington State to San Diego, I remember telling myself as I poured my belongings into boxes that I would sort through all my personal papers once I arrived in San Diego. Well, I didn’t.
During the middle of the seven years we lived on Vashon Island Luke and I moved to Flatridge, Virginia during the summer of 1992. We lived in my deceased maternal grandparents’ farmhouse. A U-Haul was rented and every last thing from the Vashon Island house was crammed into the U-Haul. I even dragged my Peugeot behind the U-Haul on an orange carrier that left the back tires to bounce across three thousand miles of hot pavement while the front tires were tied down, pointing skyward. And let me not forget the green and white Chevy pickup truck, with no AC, that Luke and I traded off on driving behind the U-Haul and bouncing Peugeot. We lived in Flatridge for exactly three months and then turned around and moved everything, including both vehicles, back across the country to Vashon Island.
Before the move to Vashon Island, I alternated between Seattle and L.A. for 10 years, never bothering to purge papers or clothes. I simply added to my swelling menagerie. And before that, I attended 4 colleges. I moved from one to the next one, adding to the initial belongings I took with with me after I graduated High School in Roanoke, Virginia.
The point of this post? Tonight, some thirty-five years after graduating High School, I came across two things: a letter I wrote to my maternal grandmother when I was seven-years-old and never mailed and a shirt I wore during the summer of ‘73 when I traveled to St. John’s, Newfoundland to Memorial University where I had been accepted. The question is: will I finally purge my personal papers and clean my closets or continue icing the uneaten moving cake as I head into the desert to start the next phase of my life on Earth? Stay tuned…