the week of The Move: fifteenth

I suppose this isn’t huge by American standards: my fifteenth move, big deal. I have friends my age in Poland who have only moved twice in their lives: out of their family home to a small place of their own and then, when they felt more prosperous, what with a market economy and the spirit of capitalism, to a second place, bigger and better than the first. That’s it.

My moves resemble a board game – from one state of being to the next: up the ladder, down again, up up and then plunge. And now, settling into a space that I regard as up, but within a very tiny enclosure. So that if you take the Edwards’ new home and divide it into 25 little homes, one of them should overlap with the likes of mine. [Of course, there’s more of them, but I do accommodate family reunions, at which time we are almost equal in number. But for the live-in help. I haven’t live-out help, let alone a parlor maid or whatever else it is that the wealthy find indispensable.]

In travel, I love packing to go and hate unpacking on the return. In moving, I hate packing and am okay with opening boxes and hiding things in closets.

This is why once more, instead of attending to the packing, I placed myself on my condo balcony, where I built an blue tiled table that doesn’t really match with much of anything else there and I stuffed two more Italian clay pots with even more perennials (shhhh!!!). I swept the spilled dirt down below, appreciating the fact that I am on one of the lower floors (aka cheaper units) and so I cannot offend anyone with my showers of dirt.





Oh! And let me explain to those in the dark about condo life. We condo inhabitants, we do not have apartment numbers. That’s for lesser mortals. I learned this the hard way: every time I filled out change of address form, the system bounced back my address as not “apt. 308” but “unit 308.” We live in units. And yes, there is an omnipotent master of the condo universe who looks after things of this nature and makes sure condo people are well treated by important entities such as the postal service.

And, while I am on the subject of postal services, let me explain the real reason for my move: my soon to be inhabited condo has a concierge. It’s a classy sounding name for what is really a doorman in NY parlance, except for the fact that this dude actually sits the entire morning and opens no doors. But he does accept packages from UPS and postal types and for this I am grateful.

I must pack. To boxes now. Tour de France, keep me company. Thank you.