The dictionary defines moving as “to go from one place of residence to another."
That sounds so easy, but in real life, moving from one residence to another is one of the most traumatic experiences in your life. Ask me—I’ve moved 25 times before we settled in Utah 25 years ago, and even then we’ve moved once while we’ve lived here.
Once, many years ago as a teenager, I had the bug to travel, “to be a gypsy,” and see the world. I grew out of that about the 20th move. Actually I don’t mind it after I have moved and gotten settled into a new home; I enjoyed living in new areas of the country and learning about new cultures. I never got tired of that. It was the actual physical MOVE that drove me insane.
<Since my husband was in the military, we had the army move us in moving vans so it
wasn’t like I had to physically pack every box, and unpack every glass and plate. But the process of moving was still overwhelming.
Moving involves change and no one likes change. Usually it means going through and getting rid of stuff. There is a weight limit, so you have to look at everything and weigh in your mind whether it is worth moving if you go over weight and have to pay [blank dollars] per pound for a $5.00 item that weighs 20 pounds.
>If you can buy an item somewhere else as cheaply, then give them to Goodwill or neighbors. Everything has a material value and a sentimental value and you have to separate the two. Children’s kindergarten drawings can be dumped when the children themselves are in college.
One of my memorable moves were moving to the big island of Hawaii. All our items were in
containers and a fork lift went right through the top of one of them and destroyed everything in that area of the container. They left it open to the weather and still shipped it to Hawaii, so by the time it arrived there, everything in that container was pretty bad. That was an interesting arrival because we had to wait months for our stuff to arrive so they put us up in a hotel until it got there. Four children, including a six-month old baby living in a hotel. It was insane.
My husband got his dream when we left Hawaii; I had gone back with the kids for a family reunion, so he did the move by himself. He got rid of anything he wanted and I couldn’t say a thing. That was his favorite move, and mine also, because I wasn’t involved in the move at all—I was on holiday.
Somehow overseas moves always went wrong! When we moved to Italy, we had to store most of our furniture and take a limited amount with us to Italy. I remember when the movers were moving a lot of our heavy furniture to the van in a driving rainstorm without covering it up, I had a conniption. This was the stuff that was going into storage for three years and they were loading it and all the boxes with it wet with rain. I could see what it would look like in three years after being stored in hot, humid Alabama weather. I called and they stopped, and corrected the problem, and our stuff survived.
We had our first three children in three years so they were a handful. On moving day, we always farmed them out so they wouldn’t be in the way. But somehow, something always happened, whether it was injuries at the friends’ house, or stomach flu, or no sleep for days. Moving from Chicago, my youngest son, 18-months old had just gotten home from our friend’s house, fell off something, and needed stitches in his chin. It was a welcome relief to leave my husband in charge of the move, and take him to the emergency room. At least we didn’t have it as bad as our friends’ children breaking out in chicken pox in the middle of the move. Children always sense stress in others so they always act out and make things worse, so you just have to deal with it, but it isn’t always easy.
My worst move—the absolute worst—was moving from El Paso, Texas to Ft. Hood, Texas in 1974 with those three little children. We had two cars, so my husband drove one car and I drove the other, with all of the children in it. (I knew how to take care of the kids, of course; he didn’t, he explained.) Our children were six, five, and four-years-old, and I got moving boxes to make desks for each of them, made them “travel kits” hooked onto the boxes for their stuff, and away we went.
Now, to understand this situation, you must know I hate driving. I am terrified of driving.
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| Marc, Marlowe, myself, Athena 1974 |
Driving on the freeway back then would give me nightmares for a week. Put me in a car with three little children and tell me to drive almost 600 miles across Texas was enough to do me in. I always used music cassettes in the car so we sang across Texas, but every time we pulled into a gas station, I’d get out and take all the children to the bathroom, get them something to eat, and then, sob on Ed’s shoulder that I couldn’t drive another foot. That I really couldn’t. I would die if I had to get back in the car. He would tell me that he’d been behind me and I’d done fine; none of the kids had gotten out of their seat belts or killed each other. I hadn’t crashed the car. I could make it to the next gas station. Finally I’d take a deep breath and climb back into the insane asylum on wheels. There were no DVDs, no TVs, no video games—just me and the kids, my cassette music and my “travel kits.” It took us two days to make it to Ft. Hood—two days and my sanity. I still have nightmares of that drive.
"Why I am reminiscing about trials during moving? Because my daughter Diana and her family just moved from Chicago to Utah with her five-year-old son, and Diana developed shingles on the way here. Stops at Insta-Care Centers, Emergency Rooms, and lots of pain meds followed. Diana had started out driving, but after the shingles got so bad, Diana couldn’t see because of the pain in her trigeminal nerve so Diana’s mother-in-law had to drive. As bad as my moves were, at least I didn’t have any move THAT bad. Diana is just trying to show me up!
