It's 3 a.m. (She Must Be Lonely)

I type more slowly these days, and it’s not the chill in the fall Kentucky air stiffening my fingers. Ally, our brown tabby cat, sits on my lap while I type. A few minutes after I open my Blog files, I’ll see a flicker of movement in the corner of my left eye. My eyes focus on a tail, pertly bobbing across the room until it dips sharply, and Ally alights soundlessly in the space between my body and the back of the computer chair. She’ll balance lightly on one armrest and peer around my shoulder with her small, pointed face. If I haven’t scooted back a bit to make room for her, she will retreat to the cove created by the small of my back, but her favorite thing is to wedge herself into the crook of my elbow and snooze on my lap, emitting periodic reedy snores. I didn’t think cats snored before I had Ally. Her warm, nine pound body changes the position of my left arm, making it harder to type, and her senseless head wags up and down as my arms change position to strike the keys. It’s a small price to pay for the blissful warmth that radiates from my lap to my entire body. How did I ever do without you, kitty? I wonder.

In July of 2004 Craig and I signed the papers on our first mortgage and moved into a little house just off Main Street in Ripon. I was three weeks into my third year of teaching, and the move took every last bit of my non-working hours for six weeks. I was sweeping off the front step and throwing down our doormat when I noticed a small cat threading its way between the rosebushes and sidling up to watch me. I put out my hand, and it condescended to be scratched before stepping back to regard me suspiciously. Clearwater eyes in a young but not kittenish face appraised me introspectively. She was mostly the color of coffee creamer, but tabby striped brown, and there was a hint of Siamese in her slightly darker face, ears, paws, and tail. She pivoted on little back legs, and as she hopped out of our yard I thought it would be nice to have a friendly cat in the neighborhood.

Craig and I were able to get a pet if we wanted, but I didn’t know if we would. Craig had both cats and dogs as a child, but he and my childhood pet, Chiquita, didn’t exactly have a warm relationship. Craig came to see me one night early in our dating years. He was sitting on the couch, chatting with my parents, and Chiquita curled up on his lap and went to sleep. I, of course, was charmed by what seemed like an intimate bonding experience for man and cat. Suddenly, Craig gestured to my parents in conversation and Chiquita levitated out of her sound sleep and attacked Craig’s hand with the ferocity and speed of a cheetah, grabbing it with her paws and biting it. From then on, Craig and Chiquita regarded each other suspiciously from opposite sides of the room. It was clear when we married that Chiquita would continue to live with my parents. Our first house was leased and pet-free. Now that we had become homeowners, I expected to settle into our house for a year or so, and then maybe look around for a kitten to adopt on one of my months off.

I expected the next few weeks to give me insight on the owners of the mysterious tabby, but I continued to see her catching mice in the orchard behind our house and sleeping in the browned grass of late California summer. I felt sorry for the serious, industrious little animal. One afternoon I caught her balancing on our glass-topped patio table, bolting down half a cup of milky coffee I had left there from breakfast. I couldn’t help but notice her grow a bit wispier, although she seemed to keep herself in meat while ridding the neighborhood of unsightly pests. The previous occupant of our house had a constant mice problem, and we were grateful that we never saw a rodent run across our kitchen linoleum. One morning I opened the back blinds to see a huge dead rat on our doorstep. It was clear who was responsible for this.

One night Craig and I spread a blanket on our back lawn and sat down, tilting our heads back to see the night sky. Suddenly, there were three of us on the blanket. Craig started up in surprise, and the tabby bounded away, clearing our six-foot back fence in two bounds.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Just a cat. I’ve been noticing her around lately. She’s really tame, but she doesn’t seem to have a home,” I replied. “You scared her off!”

“No, I didn’t. I just eagerly jumped towards her to welcome her, and she bolted. It’s not my fault that she misunderstood my gesture,” Craig retorted, and I rolled my eyes.

“Do you think she’ll come back?” I asked.

“No,” was Craig’s reply, but the timing was unfortunate. At that moment a white streak across our lawn became a furry body trying to arrange herself comfortably on the folds of our blanket.

By this time, the cat and I were not exactly strangers. I had taken to checking on her after school each afternoon, just to make sure she was all right. I’d put down my school bag and throw on some flip flops, then head out the back door to walk along the fence, staring through the orchard in search of her. The second time I did this, she bounded up to our chain-link fence, climbed it nimbly and took a flying leap, landing in the middle of our yard. Careful not to startle her, I sat down on the grass and she sidled up to me, settling down for a nap in my lap like it was a routine. The next day, she was waiting in our back yard, and the day after that she was pressing her nose to the glass of our back door, waiting for me to come out and see her.

My afternoons in the sun with a cat on my lap were a guilty pleasure. I enjoyed the companionship, but I needed to take responsibility. I would have to take her to the shelter or adopt her myself. I thought she was tame enough to be adopted, but in the meantime she would be caged in a small room with other animals. She was clean, sweet, and healthy, but not at the cute kitten age most people want when they adopt a shelter animal. If I took her to the shelter, would she be passed over?

I had a million reasons why adopting a stray was a bad idea. She’ll be feral. She won’t be housebroken. She won’t adjust well to having daily contact with humans. She may be sick. I wanted a kitten, and I thought it was better if an animal bonded with its owner in the first few months of life. Somehow, I just couldn’t reconcile those beliefs with the warm S-curve of the body on my lap.

I think my long slide towards adoption started with giving her a name. She became my Ally about six weeks after we moved. An independent fighter like her needed a strong name, not a cutesy moniker like Fluffy, Snookums, or Puss. I liked the veiled allusion to her strayness—she was an alley cat. I rejected the more feminine Allie in favor of A-L-L-Y because she was also my ally, my friend and comrade, and I was already used to having her around. I tentatively used her name in casual conversation that night. Craig raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. We had talked about adopting her by now, and I think he realized the power this furry little creature had over me already.

I asked around, and learned that Ally had belonged to our next door neighbors, who moved out a week after we moved in. I asked if there were any plans to collect their cat, and there were none. Ally was abandoned. Well, that explained her comfort level with humans, or did it? I wondered how she could acquire such a loving and gentle nature living with people who would take off and leave their pets to fend for themselves. I’d heard of feral cats, but feral humans? I obtained the new number for her former owners, and dialed, mentally rehearsing what I would say…

I just thought I’d let you know that your cat is fine. You know, the one you left to starve when you took off for a new city. I’m adopting her, and though I can’t say I’ll be the world’s greatest pet caretaker, you certainly haven’t given me much competition. I hope you sleep better at night knowing that she is being cared for…

It was easy to rant about the unfairness of Ally’s situation, but manners overcame the diatribe I was preparing as soon as a wary, middle aged female voice was on the other end of the line. I introduced myself and detailed finding the cat and learning it had belonged to her.

“Oh, yes, that’s our Kit!” she said brightly. I bristled. This woman did not have a right to name MY cat. Not your Kit, lady. My Ally.

“So, then, you have plans to come and get her?” Please, no.

“Well, when it was time to go, we called and called for her, but she just wouldn’t come and get in the car with us.”

Wow. That’s the greatest excuse I’ve ever heard. It’s not your fault; it’s the cat’s fault. If only she had approached an unfamiliar, belching metal monster and hopped right in, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If your kids refused to get in the car, would you have left them, too?

The woman sighed apologetically, “You see, we have this tiny apartment in San Jose, and no room for a pet. We had to get rid of the dog, and we only took the one cat, Kit’s mother. Last week she was hit by a car. We just don’t think we have room…” her voice trailed off, and I took a deep breath. If this woman wasn’t going to feel a sense of personal responsibility, I certainly could. She brightened at my suggestion that I adopt, er, Kit, and was able to tell me some useful information. She was a year and a half old, and had never been seen by a veterinarian or given shots. She was spayed, however, probably because her own mother produced two prolific litters in the same summer. I pleasantly thanked her for the information and ended the conversation. Taking long, deep breaths, I walked to the backyard, where Ally waited on the grass by our lawn chair. Although I know cats hate to be squeezed, I picked her up and gave her a small hug. Ally had been orphaned earlier this week, and if she had gone with these people, she may be dead as well. I was lucky to have her.

Three years later, I thought back to the conversation I had with Ally’s previous owner. Although I still didn’t condone the woman’s decision to abandon an animal, this time I could identify a bit more. We, too, were planning a move, and I agonized over what to do with Ally. She had grown to be a very important part of our life in Ripon. I would still spend afternoons with her on my lap, and when I let her in she would rub ecstatically around the edges of the living room coffee table, massaging her face against the corners in a comical motion I called lip- grinding. She was the only cat I knew that could tolerate sleeping under a blanket. In the winter, when she was cold, she would nose the edge of a blanket over herself, and I would pull it over her, face and all.

Although she enjoyed her afternoons in the house with us, she thrived in the orchard. Even though we fed her well, she continued to catch mice for sport. She would run to us when we called for her, scaling the fence and hopping daintily along the top towards us. Besides the dreaded yearly trip to the vet, she had never been away from this neighborhood. How dare we take her so far away? If we gave her up so we could move, would we be any better than her first owners?

Surprisingly, Craig put his foot down when I mentioned the possibility of letting Ally go. “We’re a family. The cat comes with us!” I was touched that he would respect the bond Ally and I had enough for her to make sacrifices so she could come with us. Believe me, it was a sacrifice. We traveled 2500 miles with her, and she clearly thought the journey was a week-long trip to the vet. It was like having a one-year-old opera star in the backseat of the car, subjecting us to panicked arias and leaving us wondering if she needed to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom. At night, when we reached our pet friendly hotel, she would wake me up at three a.m. and yowl piteously, redoubling her efforts if I acknowledged her vocal performance by moving a muscle in bed. When we finally reached Lexington and unloaded our furniture, she retreated to a tiny space under the dresser, where she spent six weeks punishing us for putting her through the ordeal.

I described her vow of silence to my dad over the phone, as well as the three nervous days she spent in our new garage when we first arrived. I had the idea that she would feel better if she could see her new house with all of its familiar furniture: her favorite low coffee table, the couch where she loved to nap on a blanket, and the black ceramic cat statue that makes her hiss because she thinks it is real.

“Don’t worry too much about familiar things. All she really needs are familiar people,” said my dad, and he was right. Ally recovered, and after several weeks forgave me, at least enough to enjoy the comfort of my lap. Our second Lexington move didn’t make her miss a beat. The next day she was racing up and down the basement stairs and staring curiously out the window at a groundhog that wandered into our backyard. I could never imagine her out of the context of our old Ripon house, but she is thriving here, as Craig and I are, more every day.

Three Forks, Three Links, Three Stakes....

One of the things I like best about Lexington is the name. I love the way the syllables roll off my tongue, and haven’t adopted the way locals shorten it to Lex or the trendier Lextown. There’s nothing like a good name.

Kentucky has an abundance of strange and interesting place names. Some remind me that I am in the South: Cobbler's Knob, Salt Lick, Turkey Foot, Stamping Ground, Cowcreek, Paw Paw, and Do Stop. Is that Do Stop as in “Do stop by and see us, y’hear”? I think it is. Other names defy all explanation: Krypton, Rightangle, Big Windy, Goforth, Hell’s Halfacre, Hi Hat, Tyewhoppety. I’ve heard New Jersey called “the armpit of New York”, but only Kentucky has a place named Shoulderblade.

Do people in Nada, Kentucky have inferiority complexes? What about those in Nonesuch? I wonder if those in Oddville live up to its name? It could be worse, though. They could hail from Broad Bottom.

Headline news this week told of a London woman who died after a snake-handling episode in her local church. I shook my head, imagining the restrained English passing poisonous snakes around over their tea and biscuits. Something didn’t jibe. I looked back at the article and realized they were talking about London, Kentucky. Many place names in Kentucky have a foreign ring. Without leaving the state, I could visit London, Paris, Baghdad, Cairo, Mexico, Lebanon, Egypt, Canada, Warsaw, and Moscow. There’s even a Versailles, but don’t dare say it the French way. That’s Ver-SAILS, thank you very much.

Some pairs of names made me look twice as I flipped through a state map booklet. There’s a Ford, Kentucky and a Chevrolet, Kentucky. Edward R. Murrow might be interested to know that there is a Goodnight and a Goodluck. I wonder why there’s a Democrat, Kentucky but not a Republican. Ernie Fletcher, the lame duck governor, is probably wondering, too.

With so many interesting places to go, I could travel for years and never leave the state. My entomologist husband may want to visit Bug, Beetle, and Butterfly sometime. I suppose if we ever get homesick, we can visit California, Kentucky. It’s about ninety miles north of us.

You Never Forget a First Love

Soon after we were married, Craig was casually approached by a perfect stranger who offered to buy his Ford Mustang. It shocked me that someone would want the car enough to ask for it when it wasn’t for sale. Craig answered the offer with a casual negative and a prideful gleam in his eye, and I wasn’t surprised. Craig loved every aspect of the car, from the way the small back seat folded down to extend the hatchback cargo area to the written record of service visits that he meticulously updated and kept in the glove compartment.

It gradually became clear that the Mustang was a young man’s car in the eyes of many, who assumed that we should sell it. I was often asked when we “were planning on selling the two-seater,” often with the spoken or implied add-on in order to buy a family car. I would ignore the wistful glance at my abdomen that always accompanied these conversations and give my prepared answer: “Craig and his Mustang go further back than Craig and I do. What if I told him he needed to sell the Mustang, only to find out that its hold on him was greater than mine?”

The 1993 dark blue Mustang LX definitely caught my attention when we were seeing each other. I could spot the Mustang easily in a parking lot full of gold sedans and white minivans. Craig would be waiting for me by the bookstore coffee counter, ready to start contemplating our order. Ours was a long distance relationship, and in that year of long separations I would eagerly anticipate seeing the dark-blue Mustang that brought Craig for weekend visits. My full load of upper-division literature classes often filled my schedule so completely that monthly outings in the Mustang were my only social activities. Sitting in the passenger seat felt like a warm embrace; I would look inquisitively at the galloping horse dashboard emblem trying to memorize it, saving the memory for a long Sunday night of studying.

I didn’t marvel at the hatchback or the 5.0 engine, but I was impressed that the car ran dependably. I was driving a muddy brown-colored four cylinder Mazda that racked up thousands of dollars in repair bills while stranding me nine times by the side of the road in the three years I owned it. Once, I was on Highway 99 South, driving seventy in the slow lane with a car that wanted to go eighty on my tail. Suddenly, my electrical system went haywire like a scene in a 1980’s alien abduction movie. My air conditioner spat short bursts of air, my radio crackled and was silent, and my engine revved and ran low. The car bucked so ominously that I took the exit that conveniently appeared to my right. As soon as I came to a stop at a gas station, my power system went so dead that turning the key got no response at all. Twenty-four hours and six hundred dollars later, I headed south again with a new alternator. This one lasted a scant six weeks, only to die in the same fashion two miles from my Southern California apartment. To take advantage of the warranty, I had to carry the defective alternator around in my trunk for three weeks until a trip home for Thanksgiving allowed me to drive it back to Chowchilla where I had so frighteningly broken down before. Turning fast corners to get to class would send the heavy part thumping from one side of my trunk to the other, causing my classmates to inquire about the health of my car. “It’s fine, it’s just the alternator!” I would smile glibly.

The last page of our wedding album shows Craig helping me into the passenger seat of the Mustang. We were still dressed in ceremony attire, and the volume of my skirt billowed up like an extra passenger sitting on my lap. We were able to remove the window paint, but the black leather car bra never recovered from the liberal use of silly string.

Soon after, as Craig’s on-call hours increased and his employer gave him control of a company pickup, I became the primary driver of the Mustang. Immediately, while idling the car at the Exxon station, I noticed a sonorous, brassy sound coming from the hood of the car. The Ford dealership charged us two hundred dollars to tell us what I told them when I gave them the keys: the alternator was going out! Instead of paying seven hundred more to replace it, we picked up the car and took it to a garage belonging to a friend of a friend. We got the same Ford alternator for five hundred less than the dealership, and there was no charge for labor when it quit six weeks later and was replaced under warranty. Despite the single bout of electrical trouble, the Mustang ran great and rarely needed work. For the first time, I was the primary driver of a reliable vehicle.

I had never imagined driving a sporty car, and sometimes felt that I didn’t quite deserve it. Parked at stoplights, I would attract longing gazes from pimply adolescents and balding, middle aged men alike. At least I was sure they were salivating over the car and not me. As a middle school English teacher, my geek factor was greatly diminished in the eyes of my students when they discovered that I drove such a cool car. One afternoon I walked out to my car after holding after school detention and found four boys on skateboards begging for “a tow.” I sat in my car for ten minutes until they were finally convinced I had no intention of pulling away from the curb with them hanging on to the spoiler.

Picking the car up from the mechanic was a different experience. He would lecture me on the proper way to shift without damaging the clutch, all the while running his hand back and forth across the hood in a gesture that seemed a little possessive. “You know, these 5.0 engines are the best around. They put them in stock cars!” he would muse, and then suddenly shake his head out of a daydream and take my credit card. Yes, I know, because you told me that last time I was in here. As I activated my left turn signal and pulled out of the parking lot, I wondered if he ever watched me leave at the responsible posted speed limit of 25 mph, wishing he could take the car away from me and give it to someone who could truly appreciate its performance. “Sorry, ma’am, but a car like this deserves someone who can truly handle it. I know you love the car, but you just don’t accelerate like it was made to. I’ll show you some four-cylinder sedans of comparable value that would be more fitting for your style of driving.” Admittedly, I was an unlikely driver for such a powerful, responsive engine.

I don’t like to recall the only time I accelerated fast enough to leave rubber marks, especially because I was just learning to drive the car. It took me weeks to get used to “a stick,” and the tricky double movement of accelerating gradually while releasing the clutch had me stalling jerkily four or five times in a row. I gathered my courage in preparation for another attempt, and shocked Craig and myself by pealing out of Craig’s parents’ garage, going in reverse! The tire marks persisted for months, and my embarrassment lasted even longer when I recalled the squeal I made.

As we gratefully said goodbye to Craig’s job, the pickup left, too. I had a strange relationship with that white truck. On one hand, hearing it maneuver into our driveway meant that Craig was finally home. Something inside me unclenched knowing he had made it through another day (or night, or day and night) of work and could be home and rest. Unfortunately, the truck was also a symbol of Craig’s job; he was always available ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Even now, I view white trucks on the road with a twinge of dismay. We will most likely buy a truck at some time in the future, but it will be any color but white.

I think Craig enjoyed driving the Mustang again in the weeks after his farm job. It was our only car for a few months, and the cooperation it took to make that work was good for us. It was good for the Mustang, too. The inside and outside took on a cleanliness it never had when it was solely my car. I’ve heard that women keep clean houses but messy cars, while men keep their cars spotless and let their houses get messy. The back of the Mustang had definitely accumulated a layer of female clutter it was unaccustomed to. The outside, too, got a new coat of wax, which I had never figured out how to apply.

Nine months before we moved, we bought a practically new silver Malibu that took us back to two-car status. It wasn’t exactly the “family car” that so many were longing for us to buy, but it had a bigger cabin and front-wheel drive for snowy weather. I drove the Malibu, and finally the single man’s Mustang had a man driving it, but we were looking ahead to our move and wondering what to do about transportation. Always the practical (heartless) one, I admit that I thought it best to sell it right before we moved. It didn’t help that it was starting to have a few problems. The battery light brought us back to the mechanic, and the news should not have surprised me: the Mustang needed an alternator again! I think Craig changed his mind weekly from September to May, but June saw us putting a sign in the window and advertising the car in the newspaper. Yes, we loved the car, but it seemed the right time to part with it.

A week after we started parking it on Main Street to be noticed, a now recognizable low drum roll noise announced the failure of our fifth alternator. “Six alternators in seven years!” I mused to the mechanic, who looked up the warranty and called in for the part. “I think you need to give me a punch card for these. I think if I buy nine, I should get the tenth one free!” As he took the keys and filled out the paperwork, he noticed the sign in the window and (I swear) his eyes misted over.

“Wow, you’re finally selling the Mustang! I remember the car I bought when I got my first job, a 19— Camaro that I loved with an intensity I’ve never given to any woman. We had fifteen good years together, and when I sold it my wife had to hand over the keys, I was crying so hard!” He was standing on the garage floor with his hands covered in a layer of black grease, but sniffling like a kid. I wondered if I should hand him a tissue so he wouldn’t have to dry his eyes on the rolled up sleeve of his shirt, one of those garage regulars with “Mike” stitched on to a monogrammed patch.

My first Mazda was sold with a sense of relief, although it may just be that signing the back of the title meant that I would never have to write another twelve hundred dollar check for transmission work. Still, I think that there must be an emotional connection to one’s first vehicle that is attached to the Y chromosome. Mike the mechanic wasn’t the only man I know who turned on the waterworks when a first car was involved. My brother was sitting at a stoplight in his red Ford Ranger when an SUV hit him and pushed the truck into the car in front of him. Insurance totaled the car and paid enough for him to get something with better gas mileage, but I couldn’t mistake the emotion in his voice when he described his last few moments with the truck before he gave the keys to the adjustor and watch it wheel away.

Calls started coming in about our Mustang for sale, but there was always some reason that the interested party wasn’t the right one for the car. This one lived too far to come see it, this one was too young and probably couldn’t afford the insurance, this one didn’t know anything about Mustangs. I wondered if we would cave and keep the car and each drive the 2,500 miles to Lexington in a separate vehicle.

Finally, on the afternoon after the movers loaded our furniture, we accepted an offer. It was lower than we originally wanted, but isn’t it always? The owner always perceives more value because they see the car in terms of what they’ve put into it, and it always seems like a lot. The man knew what it was worth, and was going to drive it as it was for a year and then totally redo it with a kit that would make it look like a classic Cobra. He knew a good engine when he heard one.

“If you have any trouble with the alternator, it’s on warranty,” I said bravely as we made arrangements for him to collect the car from my Dad when he had the cash. Was there something in my eye, or was this starting to get to me as well? We parked the car in front of my parents’ house, and I thought again of the past that this car represented. I was sitting in this passenger seat when Craig first told me that he loved me. We took this car to the park where we shared our first kiss.

Before we locked the car for the last time, Craig took out his pocketknife and removed a frayed piece or curling ribbon from around the exhaust pipe. It was left there from when our wedding party attached cans to our getaway car. All at once, I felt guilty. Craig owned the car for twelve years. He was making monthly payments on it when I was taking high school driver’s education. I had strongly encouraged him to sell it: it was older, it wouldn’t be practical, it had to happen sometime. Had I done the right thing? He had used the car to impress me, to court me, to transport me to our first home as his wife, and now he was giving it up for me.

I hope I’m worth it.

Three Thousand Pounds of Stuff

Registering for wedding gifts was, I suppose, my first induction into the American cult of stuff. We were getting married in three months, and there would be people who wanted to give us gifts. Thus, we began the incredibly self-centered process of picking out gifts that others would pay for, piece by piece. I remember walking through the aisles of Target with a Star-Trek scanner, pointing and clicking possess anything in the store. Did we want a turkey deep fryer? An electric towel warmer? How about a silver-plated crumb sweeper set? We wandered up and down in an ecstasy of investigation, searching for items that we would use for the next fifty years. Our choices tended towards the mundane—sheet sets, coffeepot, and Tupperware—leaving the more exotic choices for trendier couples. Craig and I are both the pragmatic sort, and only disagreed when our ideas of usefulness differed.

“No, I don’t want to register for it! What is it?” puzzled Craig, holding up what looked like a large, flat duffel bag.

“It’s a casserole dish warmer. You zip the covered dish up into the insulated liner, and it stays warm if you need to take it somewhere,” I explained brightly, raising my eyebrows and nodding genially to model my approval of this useful household staple. My laser scanner was poised and ready to add this handy item to our growing list.

“When do we ever go places with hot food?” he reasoned.

“We don’t, now, but it will be different when we are married, silly. We’ll have dinners to attend, I guess,” I bravely justified, but could tell I was losing.

“My mother never had one,” Craig boasted, and it was like wind coming back into my sails. No matter what either set of our ancestors had to struggle without, I wanted my own life, conveniently appointed with my own stuff that I picked out. We registered for the insulated casserole dish warmer, and today it graces the bottom shelf of my kitchen cabinets, recovering from the one time in our married life it was trotted out to transport a pan of steaming Hawaiian rice six blocks.

Packing box after box in my kitchen in early June, pausing occasionally to adjust positions and give my broken foot a rest, I questioned a few zaps of that scanner. We have many things that are useful but unused. We have a countertop rice cooker that Craig swears we need to use someday, but I roll my eyes and say it’s easier to make a pot of rice on the stove. Our Foreman Grill, so popular among the lean, mean grilling set, started gathering dust when high cholesterol made us stop eating beef. Nevertheless, these and many other things we don’t really use were packed up to accompany us to our new life.

It’s great to have stuff, but the soon to be moving see their stuff differently. Every piece of furniture became useful according to the probability that we would use it in the future. Our townhouse rental had one living room, so one of our couches would have to go. Moving our twenty-year-old refrigerator 2,500 miles would cost way more than it was worth, so we planned to leave it behind. What others could use went to a charity (thankfully one that had free removal), but our garbage can was full for weeks. As I prepared to leave my job, I went through my accumulation of work related things and realized that I didn’t want to take any of it with me. I started giving things out like an April Santa Claus, hoping that others could benefit. For a year before we moved, I found it hard to accept gifts that were not consumable, imagining the growing mountain of our possessions that already needed to be packed. Even browsing the spring clearance sales seemed foolish; nothing was cheap if it had to be packed in a new box and shipped.

When the cross-country movers came, our jaws dropped as we saw a full-size semi truck back its way through our small side street. This was where all our stuff was going. A crew of three loaded everything like a jigsaw puzzle into the front fourth of the truck, fitting large pieces on the bottom to make a foundation for boxes in the middle and bicycles on top. Even though we had mercilessly pared our furniture down to the essentials, we still had plenty of stuff to move.

As the crew hefted our massive oak dresser down the narrow hall, one grunted “You know, pine is a nice, light wood, and you can stain it to look like oak. People can’t tell the difference.”

“Yes, I know,” I giggled back. Sitting in a fifty-year-old chair that once belonged to Craig’s grandfather, I pretended not to close my eyes in hope that the walls would be left intact. One of our first married acquisitions was a solid oak bedroom set. I think my five-years-ago self needed a symbol of permanence and stability in the wake of so many changes. Odysseus and Penelope’s marriage bed was carved from a giant stump still rooted to the ground. I wanted something almost as solid to testify to us putting down roots. Now we had chosen a different path, but solid oak bedroom sets can be uprooted, too.

When the movers were done, I stared at our accumulation of things, which now resembled a giant sugar cube. Stranger still, this room-sized distillation of our life would be driven to Utah to share truck space with another couple’s granite tabletops and crated curio cabinets. Together our separate lives would make the journey to Kentucky, or so we hoped.

“So, which level of protection do you want to add to your moving order?” I was asked as I signed the bill of loading. It turns out that moving companies make quite a bit of their money insuring people’s stuff. If something happens to an item, or even the entire truckload of one’s worldly goods, the companies limit their liability by making people sign consent to accept sixty cents per pound in return for a botched move. I paused, imagining a supermarket scale and a bulk price value. I didn’t like the thought of treating everything I’ve ever owned like broccoli. To avoid this fate, I was expected to pay a few more hundred dollars to upgrade to a high deductible replacement plan, or even more money for the company to replace anything damaged. For good measure, the head of the moving crew told stories about moving mishaps. One poor family’s crate was dropped 200 feet off a barge, reducing their furniture to matchsticks and infusing their clothes with jagged splinters. Another woman drove to her new home. Glancing back at the truck in her rearview mirror, she was just in time to see the hydraulic lifts on the moving truck fail, leaving it stranded on the railroad tracks in the path of an oncoming train. Her stuff was blown high into the air and spread evenly over thousands of square feet.

“I’ll take my chances with the sixty cents per pound,” I said uncertainly. It seemed a little shady to pay a large company extra NOT to damage my stuff, and our homeowner’s insurance protected goods in transit. I was much happier with the idea of paying someone ELSE to insure my stuff, who would then have recourse against the company if anything happened.

One of my favorite moving pictures was of me perched on the front seat of the moving semi, balancing my boot brace on the doorframe and reaching up to pull the whistle. After the camera clicked, I was perfectly happy to climb down and let the crew manage to drive the monstrous vehicle. Our Chevy Malibu was packed full, but at least it could turn sharp corners.

The truck made the drive in nine days, pulling up in front of our Lexington townhouse on a Monday morning. We were waiting and ready to watch them unload, but the first thing they did was spend two hours on the phone. Since neither of our employers wanted to foot the bill for our move, we paid by check, which is apparently not often done. Our movers would not unload until they received confirmation that our check had cleared, which is hard to do at nine a.m. eastern time when everyone on the west coast is still in bed.

I felt immense relief as I watched the movers wheel familiar things into our new dwelling. It was almost like receiving everything all over again. Every lamp, table, bookcase, and box was recognized and rejoiced over as we placed furniture and stacked boxes on the floor. I harbored a secret fear that we would be the one in a million whose truck would be pushed over a guardrail by pieces of a falling satellite, scattering debris over a desolate canyon, never to be seen again. My mom remembered this feeling as she reflected on the interstate move that brought our family to California when I was six years old. “After all, it’s just stuff. It’s important to hold it loosely,” she rightly said.

The best thing about moving to a new house is the rebirth of every item into a new life. We have a small oak cabinet that has been a microwave center, a media stand, and a bookcase, but is now a nightstand. The shelving that organized sweaters in our master bedroom closet now holds Craig’s books in his basement study. Now that we’ve bought a house and moved again in Lexington, we’ve experienced that renewal twice in four months. The Winnie the Pooh print that Craig bought me at Disneyland on our first anniversary went from the spare bedroom to the kitchen to the master bedroom as we moved houses. Even the small recorder that taped missed lectures when I was in college now records Craig’s field notes when he gathers information for his research. Finding it years after I thought I’d thrown it away was like receiving it new. I wonder if that would work with other things lying around our house. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go hide the rice cooker.