Packing Up and Moving On

Growing up in a small town in rural Minnesota, my sensitive nature often chafed against the understood norms of the place. Yes, small town life was gracious and predictable. People knew how they were supposed to behave and, usually, they did it. This meant that there was a strong sense of shared purpose that led to routines that were convenient and comforting. Every local business operated on credit, so I, at the age of ten, could ride my bike “uptown” and have a donut at The Swedish Inn and pick up a roll of masking tape and a new paintbrush for my dad, charging both to his account without a fuss. Nearly everyone went to church and, although there were five different churches in the town – one Methodist, one Catholic, and three Lutheran – this affiliation neatly divided our community of five thousand into smaller, more intimate groups.

My life there was safe, comfortable, slow, easy, and set against the charming backdrop of rural American farm life. But adolescence brought me questions. What if you are not religious? What if you choose not a necessary profession – teaching, doctoring, nursing, farming, making, selling, serving – and need to act or sculpt or research? What if you are not straight? What if you are not conservative? My young suspicions didn’t match my hometown.

So when it was time to apply to colleges, I mailed off essays and transcripts to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and Washington. The resulting move to Chicago was transformative. And since, then, I haven’t stopped moving. Yes, my continuing journeys have been inefficient, costly, and emotionally challenging. But all things considered, they have taught me to believe in the value of packing up and moving on.

Implicit in this statement is that there is value in the packing up process, and yes, I do believe there is. My obsessive-compulsive nature loves the process of sorting and prioritizing, choosing between discarding and keeping. When I empty the linen closet to pack it, I sort through the quilts from my great grandmother, my aunts, my sister-in-law, and the ladies at Project Linus, who always send my daughter home from her frequent hospitalizations with a new quilt. And in the process of sorting I hold each quilt and ask, “Will it move on with me?” Some represent such deep family love and history that the question doesn’t even pause in my mind. But some have heavy memories attached to them. And somehow, putting those quilts in the “donations” pile lets me sort those memories into the past and gives me hope that they will bring needed warmth to someone else. This process cleanses my cluttered life and clarifies the purpose of my journey.

Important in the packing up stage is the time I do without my three tons of worldly possessions as they are en route to the new home. And I love this part. Sitting in an empty house, waiting for weeks for the furniture and dishes to arrive, I relearn those dual lessons of, “Boy, I love my seven-cup food processor!” and, “Hmmm, I can live without my seven-cup food processor.” When the truck does finally arrive, it’s like Christmas to unwrap every goblet and china dish, every book and framed photograph. Only it’s my stuff, the stuff I have gathered along the way, and it’s both exciting and familiar.

The lessons of living differently, in different places, are even greater than these material lessons. In each place I find a new way to live and learn important things about myself and my world. Drawn by the crisis in the alarmingly poor and violent neighborhoods of Chicago’s south side, I chose to make public education, not academia, my career. Moved by the rich and robust ongoing intellectual debate in Cambridge, I learned to articulate and refine my political point of view. Rocked by the shocking beauty of northern California, I grew to appreciate the role of nature in my life. And when, for the first time, I moved to the suburbs of Washington, I became at once an advocate of its social togetherness and a critic of its car-dependent sprawl and franchise restaurant ubiquity. At each stop I have gathered friends, ideas, recipes, memories, that are real pieces of my identity as a wife, mother, teacher, and friend.

So now I am moving again, this time away from beloved friends and school and neighborhood, to a new continent, a new language, and a new set of expectations. My dearest neighborhood friend wondered last week why, if I am so sad to go, I am going. “Is it what you really want?” she asked. And I could enthusiastically say that yes, I want to go, because I believe in the refreshing and reinvigorating power of packing up and moving on.

NOTE: My seniors wrote This I Believe statements for their final exam. This is mine. If you are unfamiliar with this idea, please link to thisibelieve.org to read about this project and listen to essays that have appeared on NPR shows.