The truck that arrived on Tuesday was a small U-Haul number that most of us normal folks use to accomplish local moves... the kind that has pictures all over it with the message RENT THIS FOR ONLY $19.95! (On the rear bumper is the fine print about the mileage charges). After the situation at the Lakeland apartment building, I'm sure when the drivers pulled into this place they thought they were driving through the Pearly Gates: an apartment on the ground floor of a building where they could back the truck up to an exterior door just down the hall. They seemed typically taciturn when they knocked on the door and scoped the place out, but back out at the truck, where they didn't know I was watching, they performed the Russian equivalent of a high-five... I won't go into details, but it involves dancing and vodka.
So the return of the furniture went rather smoothly and a lot more quickly than its pick-up in Lakeland. Of course, other than unwrapping the furniture, there was no unpacking involved, so that cut down on the time. The only glitch was a missing headboard. But the driver smacked his forehead and assured us he knew exactly where he had left it back in South Carolina, and he'd get it to us the next time he was in the neighborhood with no ransom involved. Since it was a flat, ornamental headboard rather than a major piece of furniture, we put this in the "if dreams really do come true" column and signed off on the paperwork. I felt a bit wistful as I said do svidaniya to the drivers and watched the truck pull away. We had been through a lot together, and a special bond had been formed between the drivers and I, no doubt aided by the fact that I could only understand every fifth word they said.
Kevin and Lynne (Sue's brother and sister-in-law) were bringing Sue's folks up the following Saturday for the final move-in, so Sue and I had a few days to unpack some stuff, hook up the home theater and get the furniture prospectively arranged. That's when we noticed that the bedroom closet in this apartment was considerably smaller than its counterpart in Lakeland. Apparently the architects had decided that today's active senior gets by with a couple of shirts, a pair of chinos, and one set of orthopedic sneakers, because the closet was roughly the size of the restroom on a commercial jet. Sue and I should have noticed this before, but... well... we didn't. It wasn't till we started unpacking that we could see that the ratio of clothes to closet space was going to be a problem whose solution required quantum mechanics or high-compression hydraulics. We addressed it immediately by postponing any action till Kevin and Lynne and the folks arrived.
When the big day came, it was great, the epitome of a
family rallying together... sort of like a barn-raising but without the
ropes and lumber and people who don't believe in zippers. All five
grandkids were there to do the things that the older generation could
still get away with telling them to do. The closet conundrum was
addressed on two fronts:
1. Kevin attacked the closet. He's more accomplished as a home-handyman
than I am, in the sense that, while I'm laying down a drop-cloth to oil
a squeaky hinge, he's putting together a nuclear water-heater with a
hammer and a Swiss army knife. So he sized up the closet in short order,
went down to Lowes (a place I have yet to work up the nerve to enter),
and came back with materials to better utilize the space for storage.
2. Sue and Lynne and Mom started paring down the wardrobe. Sue and Lynne
were merciless... if a piece of material hadn't touched human flesh
within the past 18 months, it was gone, relegated for donation. Ben and
Sam took the boxes of clothes down to Goodwill, which immediately made
plans to open another outlet.
By the end of the day, things were unpacked, pictures were hung, furniture was arranged, and everybody lived happily ever after at Hometown Buffet. It was a great day. Mom and Dad seemed to like the place and they had been real troupers in putting up with the entire process of relocation. Of course, they'd still have to adjust to a world where we could drop by at a moment's notice, but the human spirit is resilient given time.
That's about it except for a couple of post-scripts:
- As Mom and Dad settled in, and as other tenants in adjoining apartments did the same, it came to our attention that perhaps I had set the sub-woofer level on their home theater system a little high. After some time, the upstairs neighbors realized that daily 6.7 tremors were a bit excessive even by southern California standards, and traced the source back to the Curren apartment. We sent Ben and Sam over to do some fine-tuning to the neighbors' hearing aids, and everything's okay now.
-About a month after the move-in, I got a phone call that, by the very fact of its unintelligibility, alerted me that the wayward headboard had made it home. I told the driver I'd meet him on the curb in front of the apartment complex and, sure enough, he rolled his 75-footer up to the municipal bus stop, opened up the side-door of the trailer, and handed me the headboard, none the worse for wear after taking the scenic route. Then, as quickly as he appeared, the Russian stranger was gone. I doubt our paths will cross again, which is probably just as well... reminiscing would just be awkward.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton