Boxed and Waiting

Imagine a stack of white Staples storage boxes six high and six long. Then imagine it as the front stack with another stack of mismatched liquor store boxes behind. Add a small china cabinet, a couple of dining room chairs and a few end tables and that was our family room divider until we decided to rent a storage unit. I would not have taken on that extra expense, let alone the monumental task of moving the hastily built room divider, except that the kids said they’d haul it all there and back once we moved out and into our new in-law tiny house.

It was nice having the boxes gone because that room and the whole downstairs was beginning to look like an office building storage room run by a bunch of hoarding accountants.

I stripped the kitchen of everything that belonged to us. Because kitchen, food prep and table-top has been my retail management specialty for over twenty years there was a mountain of stuff to store. With cabinets and drawers empty I went through kitchen withdrawal. When I arranged my one cabinet delegated to our food I felt much better.

For the next couple of months I realized I’ll be cooking with my daughter’s pots, pans and utensils and we’ll be eating on her dishes. I’ll be cutting with her knives and drinking out of her glasses. It’s not like I cook every meal. We trade off and there is take-out of course.

We have delegated the dining room as an office for my husband (he’s self-employed) and a place for me to write. Next to my laptop one of my coffee mugs is filled with a stainless steel bouquet of a few pieces of our flatware. The mug and utensils were not stored away because they were in the dishwasher when I packed up the kitchen. It reminds me of how eventually I will use them in a new kitchen filled with our old stuff.

I’m as excited to move on as my daughter is excited to have us move out. Don’t get me wrong, we all get along, laugh a lot and are respectful of boundaries. But, the culmination of the big change, which I define as settling in surrounded by our familiars is on hold. Until the two huge flat beds pull up, unload the modulars, and we hook up to the basic amenities of power and indoor plumbing we wait. All that stuff packed in boxes and stacked in the storage unit, waits. My daughter having her parents under foot, waits. Us living in the guest room, I call our dorm room, waits.

Waiting is hard for some folks. For me it’s a process by which we shift our thinking. Waiting is not like anticipation which is the time between buying a lottery ticket and eventually checking the winning number. More often than not, that dreamy interlude is the only win we get. Waiting for our little house to be built, delivered and hooked up is already a winning ticket. All of us just have to wait until it’s cashed in. That’s when the boxes of old stuff in the storage unit come home to a new house. That’s when we get to settle in our forever-home. That is when I get to empty the mug and place the flatware where it belongs…in our house.