Skip to main content

A Move


After the marriage, a move happened. I used to think I lived simply, had very few belongings and could leave everything behind when it was time to move. In reality that is not quite how it worked out. The detritus of a decade clung to me a gooey mass of memories. The pack and move was the easier part - a couple of meltdowns notwithstanding. 
It is only when I started to unpack my belongings in the new closet that I was hit by the dead-weight of the old. In an ideal world, I would throw away everything from the past in lieu of being able to undo the past itself. But doing that is like peeling an onion - the past is laid layer upon layer and if I discarded enough of it, there would be nothing left of me or my life. I experienced an enormous sense of emptiness. Shorn of the baggage, memories and experiences there was no substance to me. I would float away like an soap bubble and the dissolve into nothingness. 
DB has yet to unpack his belongings but I doubt he will experience anything like what I did. He is simply cut of a different cloth. Unlike me, he lives in the moment and looks ahead. No matter what happened in his past, he never allows it to drag him down. On a bad day, DB will be down for a few hours and bounce right back. He is not the kind of person who will remember in painful detail when he last wore a particular article of clothing, the events of that day and allow those memories to intrude into the here and now. That is one of the things I love about him. 
He would be able to relate a lot better to the feeling of oneness that I experienced with him when I blended the spices from our kitchens together. As I did that , there was a sense of things of disparate provenance coming together very harmoniously. Unlike the closet, where the past engulfs and envelopes me, the kitchen is where it blends effortlessly into the present. I wonder why that is.

Comments

Priyamvada_K said…
HC,
I'm going through a move and transition too. Its not easy, isn't it?

In my case, I'm forward-looking on some things, very nostalgic about some other things. Toughest thing for me to do was vacate my house and my neighborhood. That was hard.

I'm ok giving away possessions - if not useful, I will happily donate. If sentimental but not useful, will take a picture for the sentiment and donate the item itself. What's the point in holding onto clothes that don't fit anymore, for example?

Priya.
Heartcrossings said…
Priya - I had no idea how hard the transition would be. DB has been single for years and does not have kids. His place was not truly a "home". Mine was - J and I were family and we have been living there for most of her childhood. There is a lot of "stuff" we've collected along the way.

It was hardest for me to decide what has sentimental value and what does not... specially when it involved J in some way. There is a fine line I found between being a pack rat and being completely without emotion or sentiment
davinleo said…
'In an ideal world, I would throw away everything from the past in lieu of being able to undo the past itself. But doing that is like peeling an onion - the past is laid layer upon layer and if I discarded enough of it, there would be nothing left of me or my life.'
I so love these lines!!

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques