My household goods arrived today — what turmoil! How do I have so much stuff? My portion of the 75 ft van, pulled by a blue Volvo tractor (I think that’s what those in the know call the truck engine part that pulls the long trailer), is tiny and takes but 45 minutes and maybe stretches to an hour to unload into my apartment. But it is box after box after box. Fourteen totes, nine picture boxes (I have a weakness for wall art), three tours from flat-pack furniture, four suitcases, and a number of liquor boxes (books – don’t ask). Now it is there for me to unpack as I packed it some seven or eight months ago. I know that I was shuffled, hurried, no longer able to make clear decisions about keeping this or discarding that. It is hard in the crush and it is mostly the little things freighted with memory that I can just tuck in here…Oh! Fuck it — bring me a tote and shovel it all in. Deal with it later. Now is later. 

I have been so happy with two plates, two bowls, two knives, two forks… I could go on … it is nice to have the luxury of two. Having just one, eat, wash, dry, eat makes a feeling of poverty. Two, eat… maybe wash… leave to drip dry… oh! I need to plate then reheat. Having two makes life so much easier. But now, I have four. Four soup bowls, four pasta plates, four dinner plates (actually eight, four in one pattern and four a gift from a potter). I’ve only ever had one over for dinner camping — that’s two of everything, classy that it matched. I think most singles in campgrounds live on gorp, with more dining out than they would admit to. I cook. Guests had, it was always chicken, Moroccan chicken with almonds and apricots, chicken chasseur (and we had a lovely Italian red), chicken with tarragon. 

Now, I look at the shelves… will I, do I, ever want to have four for dinner? Is that going to be my new life? As I unpack, I try to think back. We often had four or six for dinner. Is that the rural life? Now that I am urban, do we meet at restaurants? Houston is the leader in eating out in America with seven meals a week, on average, outside the home. There are plentiful restaurants, and many are not expensive. It is eating at home pushing New England tradition on this culture. Many of the items I unpack are wrapped with sentiment. There are the serving plates and cups from Hog Bay Pottery and a visit with Johanna’s first mentor in pottery. There are the hand-painted blue flowers from Sally Lewis, who stunned her peers in moving to rural Tennessee but making quite the stand as an independent potter. It helped that she had a twinge of Quaker, could slip into a thee and thou quite naturally, and a penchant for the Episcopal church so she could parry scripture with the best of the Baptists, Charismatics, or even Church of Christ. And I ask, with Marie Kondo on my shoulder, do I have these items because they spark joy or do I have them for their stories? 

Besides the kitchen items and unmentioned books, what else might be packed? I have imposed my New England wardrobe on Texas. There are seven, heavy, brushed cotton Woolrich shirts — in my navy days, we would call them “Chief’s Shirts”. Enlisted would be shivering or rushing to grab a jacket while the Chief strode the decks apparently impervious to the chill in just his navy shirt and ship’s ball cap. Besides the shirts, are four pairs of courduroy, a loden wool blazer, a courduroy blazer, five sweaters including a sweatshirt or two. It does get cold in Houston, but not the lasting cold of the north. 

Tomorrow is resurrecting the furniture – a desk, file storage — all from various flat-pack companies and thank goodness as the only tragedy is the broken (and disappeared) foot from a pine trunk.