Moving

Tomorrow we’re scheduled to move out of our temporary quarters, which we’ve occupied since February, and move back to our renovated apartment. This will involve moving back into our apartment the furniture and other goods that we put into storage as well as the few pieces of our furniture, books, and clothes that we’ve been using here in our temporary quarters. We have only one day to organize the latter, since our children and grandchildren, who came from Los Angeles to visit us, returned home only yesterday. Once in the renovated apartment, we'll be confronted with numerous cartons to unpack, and we’ll have to learn how to use our new spaces.

It was, I think, Johnson, sensible and down to earth, who wrote that all change is hard, even from bad to better, and as usual he was right. The oncoming change has made me anxious. But when I try to identify the source of my anxiety, I come up with nothing, clutching only thin air. What’s to worry about? That the renovations won’t be completed in time, so that, for example, the filter for the dryer won’t have been installed? The renovations are currently at a stage that we could live in the apartment as is, and as for the dryer, we can run it without a filter for a day or two. That I might make a mistake in calculating what we owe the contractor? My wife and the architect will help me there and besides, how big a mistake could I possibly make? That the new mattress, blinds, or television or the telephone technician or the cable installation won’t arrive on time? So what? We can manage without them for a short time anyway. That our houseguests, who are expected a week after our move, will find our apartment a bit chaotic? They are old friends and won’t mind. If they wanted deluxe accommodations, they wouldn’t be staying with us. No, there is no reasonable cause for anxiety.

And then I ask myself how such a small matter as moving into a renovated apartment can bother me when many people would be pleased to have that problem. When I read in a column by Nicholas Kristof that the half-starved refugees fleeing from Somalia are routinely robbed and raped on their way to Kenya, I have to ask myself how in the world I can worry about such a trivial matter as moving, especially under such favorable conditions. The Somalis’ anxiety has a basis in a horrid reality. I know I’m fortunate in my problems.

My anxiety, I’ve concluded, is based on the knowledge that this move will, in all likelihood, be my last one. Any move after that will be, as my father used to say, feet first. Well, I won’t have to pack and unpack ever again. That part’s good. But it’s the finality implied by this move that’s making me anxious. It reminds me that the end of life, which once seemed so indefinitely far away, now seems to be around the corner. So if the time is short, that’s all the more reason to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed and to stop worrying about a move from one apartment to another.

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