I have been here a little over 24 hours. This is not what I was expecting at all. When my mom asked me to help her move, I stupidly had a vision in my mind what moving meant.

What my mom had in mind was to take all the crap stuffed into every drawer and cabinet, stray pens without ink, strange knick knacks from the dollar store, at least ten pounds and various sizes of paper and envelopes, parts of things that have broken, a box of twenty five almost exactly identical purses…… you get the idea…. and shove then semi randomly into boxes. Then we pack as much of it as we can into the two cars, drive it three miles to the *new/old house and pile the boxes in the garage to be gone through at a later time. It was not logical. It also offended my sensibilities. I told my mom so and she scoffed and rolled her eyes. But it’s true, things that are not considered thoughtfully, especially when others are involved make me wince a little.

It put me in an awkward situation. I want to be helpful, I came here to be helpful but if I endorsed this behavior, by helping, it just felt wrong. I explained myself. She blew me off. I explained myself a different way. She blew me off again. I tried one last time, and she got mad. Then later on while we were standing in the kitchen, she said she understood. She told me a story about going over to her mother’s house and going in the basement to find magazines stacked waist high all along the walls. She thought it was disturbed, argued with her mom and then ended up cleaning up the basement. My grandmother was probably twice as bad as my mom with packratism. I thought I had gotten through. But no. She still insisted on sticking with the original plans, leaving me to shake my head and feel the wince.

What should I have done? I didn’t think that trying to convince her to try to change something she wasn’t ready to change was going to be of any value for either of us. Although I didn’t like the idea of repeating history, I clammed up and decided to schlep boxes down the stairs. I told her I would carry things up and down the stairs, pack and unpack the car, but not pack or unpack boxes. Even though she brought the mass amounts of crap into the house, bringing this mess on herself, I couldn’t let her break her body lugging said heavy crap around.

Now it’s ten p.m.. The cable went out . I’m watching silent static on the screen of the tv and listening to the thunder and rain and the loud ticking of the clock on the mantle. There was golf ball sized hail a while ago. It was an amazing thing to watch falling and bouncing on the green astroturf of the patio and pinging off of the gutters. I wished Andy was here to see it. He just called me a while ago. They got into Council Bluffs and they were decadently ordering room service. He said he and Vlad both ordered pie. I forgot to ask what kind.

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*For those of you not in the know: My mom kept the house that my sister and I grew up in. When she and Bob got married and moved into his house fifteen-ish years ago, she rented it out. Both houses are not far from each other in the same town. After the new/old house is painted and new carpets are put in (the last renter trashed the place), she will be able to move in. The house she’s moving out of has been technically sold.