I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression (14 page)

I felt a quiet giddiness and relief, like when you think you’re pregnant and it turns out to be Asian flu. I was smiling out loud when my husband walked in.

“You know the garage that’s been missing since we bought the house? I just found it under some junk. As they say in the ads, ‘You have to see it to believe it.’ ”

If selling the house was traumatic, moving made me a prime candidate for the Mental Health poster girl of the month.

Once when I was a kid I remember the circus came to town. Within minutes of the finale, the big tent was hauled down and loaded on a train. Aboard were 15 trained elephants, 5 wild lions, 2 domestic bears, 12 dancing ponies and a singing prairie dog all caged neatly in a row, and 250 performers and workers who waved good-by from the train as they pulled out of town.

It took me
three weeks
to make contact with my friendly moving representative.

He gave me a manual,
Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Moving but Were Too Cheap to Ask
, that said there was nothing to it. In the foreword it said, “One out of every five families in the United States moves every year. (See this page for illustration.)”

I turned quickly to this page, where a picture brought tears to my eyes. Mother was playing checkers on a moving box with her pre-schoolers. Dad, with a pipe in his mouth, was bouncing a beach ball to his son, while in the background six movers were earning hernias.

The manual continued, “Remember the three key concepts of a fun move: Planning, Organization and Ruthlessness with Your Discards.”

“If you want to stand around and bounce a beach ball to your son on moving day,” I announced to my husband, “you are going to have to plan.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“That means I have already packed your golf clubs, electric shaver, books and clothes, with the exception of a pair of slacks, three shirts, and change of shorts.”

“But we’re not moving for five weeks!”

“That’s where organization takes over,” I said. “You will note that each box which is packed has a number on it from one to nine. Each number corresponds with a master sheet on which each room in the new house is given a number. Thus, when the mover walks in the front door and says, ‘Number Five, lady,’ I will look up from my checkers game and say softly, “That’s the second bedroom on the right, down the hall.’ ”

“Where’s the master sheet?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I pondered. “It’s either packed in a Number One box with unpaid bills and unopened fourth-class mail or it is stuffed inside an encyclopedia in a banana box that I got from the A&P. It will show up. Don’t worry. In the meantime, we must work on being ruthless with our discards.”

We had never been ruthless with our discards before. We discovered that when we ran across three boxes in the attic marked,
RAIN-SOAKED HALLOWEEN MASKS
.

“I say we can do without your attendance certificates from the third grade and your leather desk calendar from 1954,” I said, blowing dust from a carton in the attic.

“Very well,” he retaliated, “I say we can do without your broom with four straws and a dress form that hasn’t fit you since you were ten.”

“Okay,” I growled, “it’s out with your torn billfold with the autographed picture of Gale Storm.”

“Then it’s
out
with that box of baby things with the milk-stained bibs.”

“Now, just a darned minute,” I said. “Any mini-brain knows that you do not throw out baby clothes.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re asking for it, that’s why. I knew a woman who gave away her baby clothes and the next month she became pregnant.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“She was fifty-three years old!”

During the next few weeks we were to devote every waking hour to disposing of our disposables. It took us a day and a half to lug all the stuff from the attic to the end of the driveway. It took our kids just twenty minutes to bring it all inside again. (The baby just sat in the middle of the floor in a Mouseketeer beanie clutching a consumptive basketball and looking hostile.)

Aganist my better judgment we even staged a garage sale that made Disneyland look like a mausoleum.

The whole idea was conceived by my girl friend Esther, who said, “You are a natural for a garage sale.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because you are cheap.”

“I don’t think you understand,” I sniffed, “that spreading one’s personal wares out in a garage for public exhibition is not only crass, it smacks of being tacky.”

“I made thirty-two bucks off my junk,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say so?” I asked excitedly. “Get the card table and let’s get started.”

The garage sale began at 9
A.M
. By 7:30
A.M.
, I had fifteen cars parked on the driveway, eighteen on the lawn, two in a ditch, and a Volkswagen trying to parallel park between two andirons in my living room.

They grabbed and bought anything that wasn’t pumping water, cemented in the ground, growing from seed, or spit sparks at them when touched.

They bought cocktail toothpicks that were billed, “Like new” … radios guaranteed not to play ever … 
plastic flowers that had died … toothless rakes … buckets with leaks … books of German military commands … and a ukelele that only knew one song, “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise.”

At one point I tried to shove through the crowd with a package in my hand. A woman grabbed it from me and said, “I’ll give you thirty-five cents.”

“No, really,” I stammered, “this isn’t …”

“Forty cents,” she said, grabbing it, “and that is my last offer.”

It is the first time anyone ever paid me forty cents for my garbage.

By 4
P.M
. I watched tiredly as a woman tried to coax my husband into her trunk.

“Esther,” I said, “this is the most incredible sight I have ever seen.”

“What’s in that package under your arm?” she said.

“It’s nothing,” I hesitated.

“It’s mildewed laundry,” she shouted. “How much did you pay for it?”

“Thirty-five cents, but some of it still fits.”

With the garage sale behind us, all that remained was the checklist the moving representative had given us.

“You want to read it aloud,” I asked my husband, “while I confirm it?”

“I can’t,” he said. “You packed my glasses away five weeks ago.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. I’ll read and you check. Did we turn off the milkman? Telephone? Furnace? Utilities? Newspaper? Garbage? Mail?”

“Check.”

“Did we defrost the refrigerator? Unplug the washer? Disconnect the Avon lady?”

“Check.”

“Did we change our address on magazine subscriptions, insurance policies and credit cards?”

“Check.”

“Do we have all of our valuables including jewelry, stocks, checks, cash, and important papers in one place?”

“They’re in my shirt pocket,” he said dryly.

“Can you drive with the tropical fish on your lap and a potbound philodendron at your feet?”

“I think so.”

“Did we ever find the front door key?”

“Did we ever have one?”

“I guess that’s it,” I said, smiling. “I have the checkerboard and the beach ball. All we have to do is find the car keys and the kids and.…”

We both looked at each other at the same time. Then we started ripping cardboard boxes open.

“Could they be packed in a Number Two box with the cocktail olives and used razor blades?”

“Try the Number Five Box marked ‘Faded Towels and Shirt Cardboards for Finger-painting.…’ ”

Actually, this wasn’t the first time we had ignored the children in the whole operation. When we made plans to move, it never occurred to us to discuss it with our
children. We knew our older son would follow the refrigerator into combat if he had to. Our daughter makes her residence behind the wheel of a compact, so it was just a matter of finding a home for her mouthwash. And we had raised our younger son with a two-word philosophy, “Trust us.”

Then, a woman at the dry cleaners said, “I cannot believe you did not call a family council and discuss it with your children. Moving a child against his will often makes a psychological imprint that is difficult to heal.”

“I don’t know about you,” I said, as we gathered around the dining room table, “but I feel like Ozzie and Harriet voting on whether or not to have the fruit punch or the Shirley Temple fizzie at the fraternity sock hop.”

My husband cleared his throat. “I suppose you wonder why I have gathered you all together. We are moving in a few weeks and wanted to encourage some discussion on it.”

My son ate an apple noisily (core and all) and said it was all right with him and left. My daughter asked us to leave the new address in the sun visor of the car and made her exit. Our youngest son said simply, “I’m not going.”

“WHATYA MEAN YOU’RE NOT GOING!” we shouted.

“I’ve thought it over,” he said, “and I’ve got too much going for me here. My friends … my school … my paper route.”

“But where would you live?” we asked.

“I could get an apartment.”

“A twelve-year-old in an apartment. You can’t even ride your bike across the highway.”

“I thought family councils were supposed to be democratic,” he said.

“They are,” barked his father, “and if you still have
relatives living in town you want to see again, be quiet.”

“You and your crummy democratic way,” I said, “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

His father took a deep breath and steadied himself against the table. “As council president, I move to motion that discussion on the matter of moving be closed and any objections must be submitted in writing before the next council meeting which has been indefinitely suspended. The family council is adjourned.”

We both sat there. “Wonder what a psychological imprint looks like?” I asked my husband.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The only thing I can remember from my father is a hand imprint on my hindside that stayed red for a year and a half. It’s probably the same thing.”

We spent all of our time being apprehensive about traveling across country with three hostile children. We should have given more time to thinking about traveling with a dog.

I’ve read about people who simply will not travel unless they can take their animals with them.

But then, I’ve also read about monks who flog themselves with chains for penance, and a native tribe in New Zealand that inflicts pain by wearing spears through their tongues.

I am as crazy about animals as the next one, but face it, following a moving van 3,000 miles with a dog’s rump in your face, and his ears whipping your face as they flap in the no-draft is no way to travel. We were not on the road with our dog eight hours before we realized he placed certain restrictions, on everyone in the car.

1. He demanded a seat of his own. In the front. Next to the window. With his own safety belt.

2. When another car passed with a dog in it, he declared the car open range and sprang from the front
to the back seat, gouging everyone with his toenails and obstructing everyone’s view. (My husband remembers the entire state of Texas as a hairy tail.)

3. There would be none of this crack-the-window-and-leave-the-dog-in-the-car-while-we-eat routine. The first time we tried it his screams were picked up by a Russian satellite. From then on, he ate hamburgers, fries, chicken, pizza, and tacos with the rest of the people.

4. He was quite selective about his rest-rooms, rejecting the barren strips along the roadside, open field, and secluded forests. He preferred the intimacy of a lawn chair at poolside, a potted plant in the motel lobby or the leg of a hotel manager.

“The problem,” said my husband one night at the motel, “is the dog has nothing to do.”

“He chewed up the last three coloring books I bought him,” I said dryly, “and he doesn’t sing well.”

“Don’t be cute,” he said. “I feel sorry for him. I think the answer is to stop more often and let him run and be with other dogs.”

The next afternoon we pulled up to a roadside park and followed the signs to a section marked,
DOG AREA
. The grass was so tall we could barely find the picnic table. Delicately, we made our way through where we found ourselves surrounded by dogs.

“This is great,” said my husband. “Just what he needs. Now where’s the dog?”

We looked around to discover him in the well-manicured lawn section sitting on a bench eating fried chicken with an older couple.

I shook my head. “I know he’s a dog. You know he’s a dog. Do you want to tell him and break his heart?”

We had three thousand miles to talk about the house we wanted. A friend who is an Air Force wife says there is nothing to reading ads in the newspapers. You just have to speak the language. Once you break the
language code salesmen use in selling houses, it’s no sweat. For example:

“A Handyman’s Dream.” If you’re married to a contractor, buy it. If not, forget it. Chances are the last major repair on the house was a new chain for the John.

“Spacious Grounds and Green Grass.” This means the septic tank is gone. To be sure, check out the house during a drought. If there is an oasis, pass it by.