Getting Ready to Go

‘Everyone should move every 5 years or so.’ I heard this once a few years back and thought to myself, “nice idea I guess, but how on Earth would I pack all the stuff?” Which kind of turns out to be the point—because in fact one CAN’T pack all the stuff, so you have to throw at least some things away (in some cases, finally). If we had moved twice in the last twelve years—even if we’d moved once!—perhaps we would have had a somewhat smaller ordeal in terms of getting ready to leave. I’m not going to say we really whittled our belongings right back to the bare minimum, but it was certainly refreshing to go through some of the junk that’s been piling up and think about how badly we needed it (if at all). So now we only have two houses worth of stuff (one going to Berlin, one staying at home) plus all the extra stuff that we gave up and shoved into boxes.

On the other hand…this process was NOT helpful or relaxing in terms of getting a family of 5 ready to leave home for a year. It just takes too much time, which frankly, we didn’t have. Nor was it helpful that our children didn’t seem able to conceptualize that a) yes, we were really going, b) it was happening soon, c) they couldn’t just take everything they owned, or d) it wasn’t going to get packed by magic no matter how cool it is when Hermione packs Harry Potter’s stuff with a wave of her wand. So I suppose you could say we had kind of a tense week—but I did ultimately resist the urge to throw a large weight through the TV screen, so that worked out OK. I suppose staying up all night packing wasn’t the best plan in either but, well, we didn’t do it earlier and time, she goes. So there we were.

There also remains some question about the wisdom of moving ourselves to Grandma’s house during the packing week. It was good in that we had our own stuff out of the way (not to mention that in some rooms we didn’t see the floor until Saturday), but we kept having to drive back and forth, we were constantly leaving things at one house that we needed at the other, and we ended up with TWO refrigerators to clean out. Like THAT was going to happen. So next time we’d have to think it through (again).

Here’s the other thing—there’s just way more stuff to do when you’re leaving for a year than you can possibly anticipate. All sorts of little things kept cropping up that absolutely had to be done before we left—except each of them seemed to require several OTHER steps. That trip to the doctor for an annual physical, for example, led to a question about vaccines, which led to a lengthy wait while the NP tried to find out if I really needed that vaccine (their internet was down, so they never did find out—but they decided to give it to me anyway) just at the time that I was supposed to be going to a dentist appointment. Then TWO more follow-up appointments to finish the vaccination cycle. How can one possibly have time for this when trying to pack??!!? Not to mention selling the car, changing insurance, getting copies of every piece of paper you can think of…I’m glad we’re finally here so we can do all that stuff on THIS side of the ocean (opening bank accounts, registering to live here, buying as little furniture as possible).