On Monday morning, a truck holding a big, blue shipping container pulled up in front of our house. Three guys – Small Shorts, Big Man, and Missing Tooth – trudged across the front patio. Small Shorts, the sprightliest of the bunch, mumbled, “We have your things.” He handed me a clipboard, a pen, and a grid displaying numbers one through 192. “Check ‘em off as we yell ‘em out.”
It turns out our lives fit into 192 boxes. Clothing, books, pillows, chairs, robot costumes, linens, Lowell Junior Prom 1990 champagne flutes. We haven’t seen this stuff in four months. And here it is, our very own episode of This Is Your Life, hosted by Grumpy Moving Men Who Want to Get This Done as Quickly as Possible.
Over the next four hours, I heard “Thirty-two!” to which I replied, “Please repeat that,” because I couldn’t understand their strong Aussie accents. I thought that after awhile they’d start enunciating to save time, but these guys were not wearing t-shirts saying Ask us to compromise. I saw Missing Tooth crack a smile once, when he said eighty-seven and I heard lady heaven. Two points, Missing Tooth. Zero points, Expat.
I wanted to read the side of each box before it entered our house to make sure Den Footstool was not going to the bedroom. This annoyed my new friends, as apparently all three have interior design degrees. Small Shorts: The box says plastic containers so I put it in the kitchen. Me: But it’s the plastic containers from the office, so please move it to the office. Small Shorts: groan, sigh, stupid American.
My mother is here in Perth visiting us, and she offered to put things in kitchen cupboards as Big Man was unwrapping them. Big Man told us that he had just gotten back from a month in Thailand and he wishes he were still there. But instead of pretty ladies and lychee martinis, Big Man was in my kitchen, unwrapping Mason jars and sighing. My mother can usually get anyone to talk, but the two of them worked in silence like railroad workers at the tail end of a 16-hour shift. After the kitchen boxes were empty, Big Man summed up the experience. “That was a nightmare.”
Speak the Truth Moving Company was supposed to unpack all of our boxes, but when I began to visualize stacks of unwrapped artwork and piles of sweaters laying around the house, I told them to stop. Plus, I didn’t want Missing Tooth touching my bras. “You can leave now,” I said. “Just leave the rest of the boxes to us.” I signed the forms and watched as the container that we’ve been waiting for drove out of sight. Then I walked around the house smelling things.
