Our young past

   Like a waterfall, all the books on the shelf in the closet came running down towards. One of them hit me on the foot, but it was a small one, so the pain was not that bad. However, the incident reminded that stuff had been stored around the house for years and years. There were so many shelves and drawers and hidden little closets and tiny spaces to keep things, and we had all used them ever since I had lived there as a young boy. I even remember my mother telling me where and how to store everything.

The book that had hit my foot was one that I had read a lot when I was young: 1984 by George Orwell. I remember being fascinated by the world building this master of writing had achieved. I really felt there, with all the characters, enduring their hardships and helping them survive somehow. Of course, the book was maybe too dark for me as a young man, but it was one of those building blocks of my personality. I think everyone should be obliged to read such a masterpiece.

 I decided to grab all the books and put those I wanted to keep in a box. Of course, 1984 would go there but there were many others that I hadn’t seen for decades and now I had to decide whether to throw them away or not. The first thing I decided on was to put all my former schoolbooks and notebooks on trash bags. I had no use for that. School had been kind of a nightmare at the end, so it made no sense keeping something that reminded me of any bad moments in my life.

 Some people keep those kinds of books as souvenirs, even to help their children in the future with their homework, but I’m more of a realist. I will never have any children and even if I did, I wouldn’t put them through the trauma and boredom of watching how lousy I was at school when I was young. I’d rather help them with current knowledge and not by reminiscing about things that no one longer cares about. So I put the about ten books and seven notebooks in trash bags.

 I did the same thing with notebooks from college. I had already studied enough and keeping them would only occupy space for other books that I would like to keep. For example, I had a small but very well preserved collection of graphic novels that I had binged through during my college years. They had been great entertainment when I wanted to relax for a while and not be so dependent on internet or anything associated with it. They were a great source of a imagination and certainly helped me build my own creativity during those years. I loved them too much to part with them.

 The remaining books where old and had belonged to my parents. So it wasn’t my choice to put them away or throw them away. I had to ask before doing anything. So I put all of those in a different box and clean the whole space with care. I put on a mask on my mouth, as the amount of dust was just incredible. It took me a long while to properly clean the closet, every single corner and space, before leaving for my former bedroom and start doing the same thing there. It seemed like a job that wouldn’t end.

 But, in time, it did. Every single thing that I wanted to keep was in boxes that would be sent to my place. Some other things would be sent to mu parents home, where they could decided if they wanted to keep all that or if they want to throw something. Knowing them, a visit to their place would be necessary because parents are all the same, they have difficulty trying to part with anything that reminds them of something you did when you were young or that reminds them of a tiny thing they did year ago.

 It’s their choice anyway. I carried all the trash bags to the containers and said my final goodbyes. After all, many of those books and toys and so many other things had been there through my younger years. Years that had been difficult at some points and joyful at others. It is weird, but as humans we do tend to give this human quality to everything that is not alive. We care for our things as if they knew we cared for them and it goes beyond of trying to preserve them as long as possible. It’s a weird kind of love.

 Driving back home, with two boxes filled with my past, my eyes started to fill up and I had to take advantage of a red light in order to clean my eyes with a tissue and just try to compose myself. Cleaning the house in which I had lived for so long had been a very unexpected experience. It’s one of those things you don’t really think much about but, once you’re there doing the job, you realized that it’s not as simple as it looks. It’s difficult to stare at your past and just see it all in front of you, kind of like a movie.

 I was grateful to get home and put the boxes on the elevator. A young woman I had never seen on the building helped me hold the button for me, as I pushed the boxes into the steel container. She got down first. She seemed very nice and that made me realize I really had no idea who my neighbors were, except for the lady that lived next door who loved to sing opera at the top of her lungs every single afternoon. I guess she thought it would be less annoying at that time of day. Maybe she had been a famous opera singer or had failed to reach her life dream. Who knows?

 I pushed the boxes all the way from the elevator to my doorstep. I was about to pull the keys out of my coat, when the door flung open and he stood there, smiling. Apparently, he had heard me coming from the elevator and had waited patiently to open the door. He grabbed one box and I took the other. We put them by the sofa and hen just fell on the furniture. I was exhausted and he seemed to be tired too. He had gone out with friends to hike some mountain or something like that. A sportsman, he was.

 We lay there for a while, slowly embracing each other, in silence. Then, the afternoon came and we realized we had fallen asleep for a short while. I woke up because my stomach was hurting. I had been working on the house all day and had not eaten a single thing. He proposed we should order takeout but I reminded him we had no money to spare for that. So I decided to stand up and cook something fast. Pasta came to mind, so I just started cooking right away, not even listening to what he was saying.

 He apparently grew tired of not getting real answers, because he then turned to the boxes and opened them. He grabbed some things, looked at my toys and browsed some of the old magazines I had wanted to save from the dumpster. He laughed when he saw my old video games, as he had never known I had played videogames when younger. It’s weird but we had never really talked about our childhood personas. Our younger self sometimes feels like a whole different person, away from us.

 I saw 1984 in his hands, just as I chopped some tomatoes for the sauce. I waited to hear if he had something to say about it, if he had any input about me owning such a book. He didn’t say a word for a while. He appeared to be checking the state of the book and some of the pages. But he wasn’t saying anything. For a moment, I asked myself what kind of couple lives together for almost a year and they don’t even share their tastes to one another. It made me feel like a failure, so much so that I almost cut off a finger.

 Then, he started reciting. He just opened the book on a random page, the one where Winston talks about Julia, and how he sees her and how he feels. The way he read it was just delightful and, as the water boiled and I put the pasta in, I smiled hearing his voice reading my favorite book ever.

 He only stopped when started serving. The food looked amazing and I think his reading inspired me. He left the book on the coffee table and, before sitting down to eat, he kissed me softly and I gently grabbed him by the waist. It felt different somehow. But different good. We smiled and ate, while talking.

Unavoidable

   First, they packed everything in the living room. The lamps, the vases, all the little objects around the house, even the chairs and the big furniture. All of that could be covered in plastic and then put in a truck in order to move. It was the biggest thing Joan had ever done and she felt very nervous about it. Packing all of her house, the things that she had gathered through the years, was not easy. Every time she decided to help with the small objects, she started telling a long story about it, recalling where she had bought it or found it or who had given it to her.

 It was all because of her husband, Martin, who had accepted a surprise job offer around the world. They have never really been that far, always enjoying their holidays pretty close to home. That’s how they had lived for the past ten years. But then, Martin had come to the house with that information, the fact that they could choose to go if they wanted to. Her husband was kind enough to consult her before accepting the job. The thing was, she had no idea what to say.

 Joan had never really wanted to travel the world or nothing like that. She had never been an adventurous person. Her personal life dreams had already come to happen: she was married, had a beautiful home and had two young kids. She knew may of her friends thought she wasn’t aiming high or that she was very unusual for a woman in this day an age, but that was all she wanted. She didn’t want to see Paris or London, Joan was happy with their summer holidays when they used the car to get where they wanted.

 However, Martin would receive a very generous raise and the truth was they really needed it. They had always thought of getting a bigger place, improving their life a little bit more. He had always wanted to own a new car, a brand new SVU or something like that. They weren’t big objectives or anything but it was their idea to make their children have a better quality of life.

 The kids were unaware of what was happening but they did notice something was different about their parents. They were always talking about something they didn’t really understand and then they seemed to be thinking of something else all day. They didn’t really seem happy or sad, more like confused and oblivious.

 For the sake of change, she supported Martin in accepting the job. Things changed then because they had to begun moving everything and it was costly. First they had to throw away whatever they didn’t want to keep or give away several things, mostly minor objects around the house. They also planned on selling some of the kitchen items but they would do that at the end of their remaining time at home.

  Some family members came by to help with some of the stud, choosing what they should keep or what they wanted for themselves. It took forever to do all of that, as everyone wanted something. They all wanted to take something or the kids would fight for a thing they had not seen in ages or they would reminisce for hours without really getting much done. So they decided to tell their family and friends it was best for them to be away while they organized everything.

 The day the moving people took away everything in the living room, Joan almost died. She felt very sad that her home seemed to have been robbed or as if anyone lived there. She was exaggerating of course, because all other rooms remained the same. But there was something about seeing nothing in that living room that really affected her. Somehow, change wasn’t something she welcomed with open arms or anything like that. She was afraid of it.

 Joan tried to talk about it to her family, her mother specifically, but she shut her down by saying it was normal to feel strange when moving but that Joan needed to understand that life is best when nothing stands still. She even told her that death was good precisely because of that, as well as children births or accidents or promotions. They changed the game in order to make you learn more and be creative and imaginative.

 But Joan didn’t care for all of that. She cried at night sometimes, after Martin had fallen asleep, as she was scared even more change would come her way. What if her husband changed too much in that other country? What if her children resented her for moving somewhere everything was so different. What if she was the one who changed, really transforming in to someone she had never wanted to be?

 The next room to be cleared was the studio. Lots of books in boxers, an old desktop computer that was sold for parts and some more little objects they had bought in their holidays and such. She couldn’t contain her tears when the truck came and took all those boxers away. She didn’t say a word to the men who came, who had been the same than before. Joan didn’t know what to say or what to ask. She felt they were taking everything from her.

 She was normally very active all around the house and outside of it. She would participate in various school activities or in the community center nearby, she would buy new thing for her house or change the decoration a bit, doing a lot of things by herself. But now, she couldn’t do any of that as it made no sense to keep doing them. No more baking, no more cute decoration in the kids rooms.

 Her children were actually the ones that noticed she had changed somehow. Her youngest, which was nine years old, approached one day in her room and asked if everything was ok. She was now suffering because her kids’ rooms were next. They were sleeping in the sleeping bags they used to go to camp. Their actual beds had been sold and new ones would be bought for their new homes. They had decided that themselves. Children were always looking forward to change, or so she thought.

 Plushies and toys and all other stuff had been selected by them: some were on boxes while others were in bags in order to be given away as donations to the community center.  They didn’t seem to mind. She thought they were going to be very upset once the asked them to do such a thing but there was no outburst or bad reaction. They just did what they had to do and seemed only mildly worried about sleeping in those sleeping bags. They had never really like those.

 The moving men came again and took everything away form those rooms. The following day they came for things of the master bedroom, which was the second to last to be scrapped of its objects. Joan asked Martin to take care of that, as it was a Saturday. He was very fast in deciding what he wanted to keep and what not and she let him handle it all except her clothes. She had to pack those herself, which was also a nightmare. Throwing the old and keeping what she liked in big traveling bags.

 Soon, they were also sleeping on the floor like their children. Two days after that, they were going to come for the remaining objects in the house, particularly some stuff in the kitchen, and that would be it. Their flight was on Tuesday so they had planned it all perfectly. Joan became more and more anxious, unable to stay inside the house for too long. She would often go to the backyard but it was difficult to be there too, as it brought too many memories to her mind.

 On Monday, she decided not to be there when the men came. Martin could handle it. She decided to go to a spa with a friend, to get a full treatment. She enjoyed herself a lot, almost forgetting why she had chosen to do that. Afterwards, they had lunch in their favorite restaurant and talked about the elephant in the room. Joan had no other choice than to tell her friend how she really felt about it all.

 Her friend told her she understood how she felt a lot, because she had lived all of her life travelling. But she assured Joan she didn’t have anything to fear as, maybe, she could discover many more things about herself in a different environment. She could try to get out of her comfort zone.

 That phrase made Joan think all the rest of the day and even the day after, when they were driving to the airport. Once they reached the security area, she realized it was all for real and that it was happening. The moment they sat down on the plane, Martin on one side and her children on the other, Joan realized she had nothing to fear. A few deep breaths and then she was ready to dive into her next big adventure.

Moving

   Slowly, everything appeared to make its way to a box. It begin on a Monday and by Wednesday, most of the objects in the house were already in one of the many boxes. As the family had lived there for so long, there were many, many boxes, which piled up in some corners and then disappeared through the door, taken away by the men in blue who worked for the moving company.

 In one box it was all about CD’s and music and movies and others boxes were filled with books. Others held stacks of papers that were useful or not at all useful. The most precious objects were wrapped in plastic and then put in their respective box. That plastic was all over the house, the children having played with it. But, after Wednesday, children appeared to have been boxed too because they were nowhere to be seen.

 Their father had taken them with him in order to prepare everything in the new home. The idea was for them to arrive before any of the boxes did and help settle everything on the other side of the world. The woman, the mom, would stay behind making sure every single object in their house was properly treated and that nothing was left behind. They decided it should be her who stayed behind because she was more organized and more attentive to detail, so she could realize when something was being done wrong or if something had been left behind or anything like that.

 The day her husband and children left, she was free to cry for a good while in her room. She had loved that room since the first day there and was heartbroken they had do to leave. It was a silly thing to be so attached to a place but that’s what humans are like, we form very tight relationships with inanimate objects, with things that will inevitably change someday. We make our lives harder that way but we kind of love it. We do like to suffer over silly things.

 After crying like a fool, she decided it was best to get organized and make the process faster because she didn’t wanted to be away from her family for a long time. So Thursday morning she made a list of the boxes that were still in the house and the objects that hadn’t been wrapped or put away. None of their paintings had been taken care off, as well as some of the kitchen objects that she used quite often.

 It was so difficult to organize because they had so many things. Not only because they had bought them but they were also gifts and things that the families passed on. She realized they had things they hadn’t even seen in a couple of years and that was ridiculous. She had to work a lot to organize the process and to try for her family in the other side to have what they needed soon.

 The furniture was already there as well as the big appliances like the fridge and so on, but they didn’t have many of the basic things like cutlery or the children’s toys in order for them not to get bored. That hadn’t been planned correctly and the mother had to make it all as efficient as she could.

 By Saturday, the house was practically empty. There were only couples of boxes left, which were going to travel with her to the other side of the world. The trip would take her many hours and she would have to take two planes by herself, which seemed like a very horrible thing to do by herself. The truth was that she had always been with someone in her life, whether it was her parents or her husband or a friend or her children. Someone had always taken her hand when the turbulence hit the plane or when the car ride was getting too long.

She had to prepare for that mentally, as she would travel the very next day. On Saturday afternoon she put the boxes and her suitcases by the door and gave a last grand tour of her house. They had lived there since they had gotten married, twenty years earlier. They had seen the house many times from afar so, when it became available for rent, they launched themselves at it and tried by all means to be the ones to live there. There were many others interested and it was a long and annoying process but, at the end, they got the deal.

 As she walked through the living room, the kitchen and the bedrooms, she realized every major event in her life had taken place there or was connected to the house. Her wedding was only a month prior to moving and even on that day she dreamt about the house she was going to have and it was amazing how that house in her mind was similar to the real house she ended up living in.

 The birth of her two children had taken place while living there, as well as the death of her parents and the engagement of her brother and many other happy and sad moments. She had organized parties and had also stayed in on rainy days with her husband and just hugged and watched movies. She had played with her children, running around as if she was a child again and she had cried when life threw them a curveball.

 Her favorite part of the house was the backyard, a fairly nice extension of well cut grass that extended some meters away from the house. It was her favorite place because she loved to read there, to exercise, to play with her children and even to make love with her husband. Even if it was a place outside, it fell as a very private part of her world. She could be herself there and no one would know or care.

 On Sunday morning, she had a big breakfast on one of her favorite restaurants. She wanted to treat herself before leaving the city she had been living in for so many years, since she had been born. They had held a party to say goodbye a week earlier but she managed to visit a couple of very good friends again before living. She stood strong as she talked to them but when she got home she cried and realized how much her life was going to change.

 She had a couple more hours to spare so she grabbed the book she was reading at that moment and just laid down in the grass in the backyard. She put the book away very soon and just looked up, to the sky and then to the side, to the grass and the fence that separated her home from the others. She had no choice anymore, she had to go through with it and she had to try to enjoy the adventure because if she didn’t, being miserable would take a toll on her.

 Her transport arrived just in time. She made sure she had everything and gave one last look to the house before leaving, trying not to extend the pain for too long. The boxes were inside the taxi as well as her suitcases so they left for the airport in seconds. On the way there, she didn’t say a word. She wasn’t really the kind of person to talk to a stranger but right then, she wouldn’t have talked to a friend either.

 In the airport, she paid for the extra weight of her luggage and then passed through the emigration area. The man that checked her passport was very silent and she was thankful for that. He asked her what was her business in her destination and he told her, choking up a little, that she was moving there because of her husband’s work. The man nodded and put on the seal on her passport and let her pass.

 She went directly to the assigned door and sat down, as she felt heavy, she felt a horrible weight on her back that couldn’t be properly lifted. She wanted to cry and scream but she also knew that wouldn’t help at all because everything was done, there was no turning back in the decisions she and her husband had made a while ago. Things were as they were and they couldn’t be changed.

 The boarding procedure begun some minutes later and she was one of the last passengers to board. Her husband had paid for business class seats on both her flights, so she could be more relaxed because he knew her and wanted her to know she didn’t have to be uneasy. As she sat down, she took a deep breath and thought she was going to see her family very soon. They were buying a cake to celebrate being together and she was going to adapt quick, as it always happens.