Work Keeps You Sane

Dearest Rachel –

I really thought that coming back to your hometown would hurt more than it did. As I’ve said before, what with you being gone (to say nothing of your folks, who served as your anchor to the place), there’s nothing for me in the place anymore. It represents somewhere – and more to the point, somewhen – that I can’t go back to, since we only travel in one direction in time.

The thing is, we had a job to do – pack up as much furniture as we could into the U-Haul Kerstin had driven down, and get it back up here to unload into Ellen’s new condominium that she’ll be sharing with her mom going forward. There wasn’t going to be time for drifting off into reveries about days gone by and all that.

The evening was spent disassembling various larger pieces (especially those with drawers, including the filing cabinet you see to the left of center) and hauling them into the garage. That’s because the last question – how to fit things into the truck – were going to be answered by someone else, someone who had not arrived, but was willing to get down there if she was needed – and the general consensus from all assembled was that she was needed as soon as she could make it…

Erin, after all, has a job packing trucks for drivers to ship out and deliver various goods to various places. If anyone knows how to play delivery truck Tetris, it’s her. And yes, I know how you would pack the car for our trips to the island, honey, but this is on a much larger (and heavier) scale than that. And again, she does this on a near-daily basis for her living. Whatever she could offer to do, Ellen and her sisters were wanting her here to do it – even if it meant driving most of the night to get there (which she reluctantly offered to do, after first checking the train timetables, and seeing she wouldn’t be able to get in until Sunday afternoon. More on that later).

So Saturday evening didn’t involve a lot of moving stuff into the truck proper, but rather setting up the garage as a sort of staging area until then. Having been up since five in the morning — that whole early workout cycle I’ve been stuck in that I’ve told you about before – I warned the girls that I wouldn’t be able to stay up terribly long. Several of them were planning on packing boxes with stuff until midnight and possibly beyond (and ideally waiting up for Erin to arrive), which you would have totally been up for. But thankfully, they seemed okay with Kirsten and myself begging off on such late-night activity; it was the sisters, after all, who needed to decide what could stay and what should go. And while I had expected to sleep on the floor of one of the rooms, I managed to snag a recliner from the great room and move it into a bedroom to serve as a makeshift bed, under the condition that I haul it back out and into the staging area come morning.

Despite her need for caffeine, Kerstin wasn’t going to be able to head out into town; the U-Haul she’d driven to get here needed to stay in the driveway for everybody to load up. Likewise, since I’d ridden with her, I had nothing to drive, either. However, Erin offered her car for us to take, insisting that she would rather stay at the house, loading and rearranging furniture. So the two of us in the U-Haul, who hadn’t had any other means to get around, were assigned the task of gathering breakfast.

But before then, there was something I needed to do, as long as I was here… I had to stop at your once-upon-a-time home, one last time.

This little bit of ceremony over and done with, Kerstin and I proceeded to the donut shop (because she claims the coffee at the gas station that Erin and the others wanted pizza from was rubbish), and then to the gas station on the other side of town.

At this point, we’d dawdled long enough that we could even stop in at one of the other restaurants that I had hoped to visit one last time before leaving the place behind forever. However, I’d forgotten that, while they serve sushi, not only did we not have a ‘usual’ favorite that I could remember, they didn’t start serving it until four in the afternoon – and all of us were wanting to get out of town long before then. For all the nostalgia factor of the places I’d intended to stop by, there wouldn’t be time or stomach space to fit them in.

Still, once we got back with our late breakfast – and everyone had polished off enough for themselves (and then some) – it was starting to look as if we might be able to make our goal of filling the truck and heading out by two.

As two o’clock crept past, and we seemed to conclude that what had been packed was good enough for the time being – there was always one more thing that could be crammed in, but we could have spent the next twenty-four hours doing so – the question arose about the convoy that would escort the U-Haul home, thereby allowing us to arrive at the condo simultaneously to facilitate the unloading process that much more efficiently. Ellen would lead, followed by Kerstin in the truck…

But what of Erin’s car? She announced that she didn’t want to drive – in fact, she hates driving (which shows just what a sacrifice it was for her to head down on Saturday night to help us. It also explains her love for public transportation, although that’s a chicken-vs-egg debate that could fill a whole separate essay). Given that I’d been tooling around in it earlier to grab breakfast for everyone, she asked if I would drive it back for her, so that she wouldn’t have to. She would then take my spot riding shotgun with Kerstin. Given that I enjoy driving, I was more than willing to ‘help her out’ in such a way (of course, I saw it as a step up from being a passenger, but that’s how it is with humanity; people just don’t always like the same things).

And as we drove out of town, I was so busy trying to keep pace with the U-Haul (never mind Ellen, who I couldn’t even see because the truck obscured my view of her little car) that I wasn’t so much as thinking about the fact that I probably would never set foot in this town again. It’s been four and a half years since I was last here – when last you and I left, it never crossed our minds that it would be so long (in your case, forever) before returning – and there would likely be no call for a ‘next time’ again. It’s enough to send one spiraling.

But there was a job to focus on, even if it was just the need to keep up with the others (and let them do the navigation by taking the lead), and that kept me from dwelling on such stuff. Work such as this may not set one free (that was a Big Lie on top of so many others, once upon a time of its own), but astonishingly enough, it might be enough to keep me sane.

In any event, now we’re back, and things are starting to for into place at the new home:

Ellen’s older sister even arrived with their mom, and got her settled in; she’s not as responsive as I remember (again, it’s been all these years), but she seems to like the place. Plus, her daughters are nearby – as close as the next room, in fact – so she can be looked after. It’s not ideal (insofar as the aging process just isn’t), but it’s as good as can be hoped for under the circumstances. And that’s what matters.

Anyway, that’s most of what went down; I’ve left out a few things, but I didn’t know where to fit them in this retelling, and this letter – the second one about the weekend already! – is also getting pretty long, and I’ve got to get on with the day. Hopefully, I can get in bits about an observation here, and a cute prank there (by the person you’d least expect!) in future letters, but for now, I think I’m just going to have to ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’m going to need it.