By Bethany Parker
Nine days and counting. My current home resembles a fraternity house during rush week – but instead of packing I’m sitting on his couch watching the Cubs lose to Pittsburgh, listening to the wind chimes outside the front door that will soon be my nightly background music and trying my best to hold back the flood that even the Hoover Dam would be hard pressed to contain.
It’s a volatile mix, this reservoir of emotion I’ve been working on for the past year. I can’t let things fall apart in these last days, but it’s not going to be easy. The disorganization in my house is a physical representation of what’s inside my head at the moment and I have to get it all put together because there’s no time left for this sort of thing.
It’s time to make lists; I’m good at working from lists of all sorts. Post-It note lists got me through high school. Steno pads and my Outlook task lists keep me on track at work and at home. I have handwritten lists on scrap paper all over the countertops. It’s a testament to how completely out of order I’ve been lately that I haven’t even been able to organize a simple packing or “what to do next” list.
Maybe it’s the environment. We are down to the bare minimum at the house we’re leaving and by the end of the week, everything but the very barest of essentials needs to be in boxes. The kitchen is nearly packed up and after tomorrow we will eat off paper plates. Bed frames have been disassembled, winter clothes boxed up, dozens of unneeded items have exited our home via Craigslist and untold numbers of bags have been hauled to Goodwill. The neighbors know we’re leaving and half of our stuff is already across town in the New House. The kids are anxiously crossing days off the calendar and showing their individual anxieties in unique and often unexpected ways.
Or maybe it’s the general emotion of everything. The other day, while at our new house for an after-school snack, the 7-year-old broke down in tears while looking for the Pop Tarts. “Mom,” he cried to me from the kitchen, “you have to help me. I can’t find the snack cabinet and I’m going to starve to death in this new house. I don’t know where anything is in here. I knew this would be a horrible idea.” And then he threw himself to the floor and sobbed.
After I regrouped — it was hard not to laugh just the littlest bit at his drama, I must admit — I sat him at the counter and showed him the location of all the important things in the kitchen, including the snack cabinet. His anxiety sufficiently abated for the moment, he retreated to the back room to dig through the LEGO box. I made a note to myself – I must remember to make sure he knows where the extra toilet paper rolls are kept so as to avoid another Defcon 5 meltdown.
Whatever it is, it’s time to snap out of it and get packing.
Bethany Parker, a frequent contributor to Chambanamoms.com, is mom to the three wilds who, despite all of their recent growing up, still manage to leave Legos where she steps on them barefoot, marbles in their pants pockets and various food wrappers on the floor of the car.