Now you, as a slice of cheese nestled between that bread, are lifted up, bread and all, and suddenly plonked into a hot metal frying pan. It feels rather nice at first. Warm, the aroma of warm bread wafting into your cheesy nose. Then it gets uncomfortable. You feel your edges drip and most of you go uncomfortably soft. You are losing cohesion as you sink, meld into the bread.
Just when you think things are at their worst, you are lifted once again and this time slid onto a cool plate. You realize you are somehow better. No longer a lonely piece of cheese, you and the bread have teamed up to become something better and more meaningful perhaps. You have become...grilled cheese. All the discomfort had a purpose...a powerful, wonderful purpose.
And isn't a well-made grilled cheese sandwich somehow more than the sum of its parts? Doesn't the heat--uncomfortable and unpredictable as it is--help create something wonderful and new?
You see, I have been the cheese my friends. I have endured the heat, along side my bready brethren, and have come out better for it.......
On Tuesday of this week, I awoke early. Our lovely neighbor Cade awoke early as well and drove me to the Uhaul office in town. I exchanged my credit card information for a 10 foot Uhaul truck.
I drove home feeling like a giraffe--perched high above the other cars, truck engine grinding in my ears.
Once at home, Cade, Patrick, to a lesser degree Aya, and I filled this truck with all the things Bob and I need to store as we make our way back to Japan. Our boxes, bins and doo-dads filled half the garage. In spite of the hundreds of books I donated and over 30 trips to various donation sites to drop off miscellany of our lives, we still had a depressingly large heap of stuff to store.
Mom-in-law to the rescue! She offered up her attic for our storage mountain. I felt so guilty....just 6 months earlier she was jubilantly returning to us all of the things that had gotten filed away in her attic over the years---Bob's high school and college papers, mementos from his year in Barcelona. Baby clothes from Patrick and Aya. Boxed up pieces of my ceramic cat collection. Our Wedding china. And she was so happy, and I was happy for her.
And here we were again, needing a place to store our lives. And there she was, giving over her attic to us.....lovely lovely.
It took us less than an hour to load up the truck. I slammed the truck gate shut, not daring to gloat yet....an even harder part of this venture was still ahead.
I haven't had a great many opportunities to drive moving vans, so I found this experience interesting. Uhaul trucks are made more for the moving of heavy loads than for the protection of squishy human bodies, so every bump and crack in the road translated into a sort of Six Flags ride for Patrick and I (Cade, following us in his car, clearly had the more peaceful journey). In the cab, clearly not insulated or sound-proofed in any way, the engine noises roared. I found myself remembering rides I had in my childhood with my big brother when he worked as a long-haul truck driver. The roar and jostling and feeling of being above all the other cars-- almost wish I had a CB radio. 10-4 good buddy.
We arrived at my mother-in-law's house and backed the truck up to the edge of her steeply sloped driveway. When I flung the door open she just looked at me and shook her head.
"Oh my" she said.
We split the job into two parts--first, we had to unload the truck by hand and carry everything up the driveway into the garage, since the driveway itself was too steep for backing the truck up into. Once the truck was empty, I parked it down the street.
Then...lunch.
My mother-in-law made us huge beef hot dogs, grilled on her gas grill, with tomatoes and newly picked green onions from her garden. Watermelon slices. Potato salad. Chips. Plenty of water and soda. Carrot cake.
Oink oink. Yum yum.
But no number of hot dogs could chase away the next step of our task: to heave each and every one of those boxes up the tiny attic stairs and up into the crevices of the attic itself.
It was 93 degrees on Tuesday. Toasty.
As the instigator of all this, and as the shortest person among Cade, Patrick and I, I went up the stairs into the attic.
Where it was at least 110 or 115 degrees. Humid. It felt like walking outside in a Japanese summer. It felt like stepping out of our air conditioned house on Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands where I grew up. The heat was thick--it was like trying to walk and breathe through hot tea.
Goody.
And so we began. At first Cade stood on the stairs and Patrick brought boxes to him, to hand up to me like a bucket brigade. Once I grabbed a box from Cade, I would carry it, stooped at a 45 degree angle, to a remote corner of the attic, working to avoid wires and vents.
At the attic's tallest point I could stand fully upright. However there were cross beams every 3 feet that sat at my throat level. When I got tired and unattentive, I would bash my head on these beams. I comforted myself that perhaps I could revive the lost art of phrenology, with my newly bumpy and undoubtedly interesting skull.
My mother-in-law brought us ice water and ice packs and wet kitchen towels to drape around our necks. Every so often she'd refill the water bottles or to freshen the towels.
Cade and Patrick traded off positions. Our jokes and silly comments got increasingly ridiculous as we got more tired. Finally, when I started to feel lightheaded in spite of the steady stream of water and cool, damp towels, I slithered down the stairs and let Cade replace me up in the attic.
I marveled how much cooler 93 degrees felt. Practically arctic.
As soon as I had revived myself, I took Cade's place once more....unlike me, Cade could not stand upright in the attic at all, and had to stay stooped all the time--something his back and spine did not appreciate.
We made good progress and, lo and behold, I heard from below me those golden words:
"Last box!".
I eased myself down the attic ladder and we all went outside to sit on patio chairs. Patrick, Cade and I were all totally disgusting--sopping wet from sweat and the wet towels we kept draped around our necks. I was further decorated with damp spider webs gleaned from walking into them up in the attic. A breeze began blowing as we sat in the shade of the patio umbrella, gulping down water.
Now, a few days later (and a lot cleaner and cooler), I am enjoying the beautiful feeling of knowing that a huge part of our moving process is done. Finding a place and a way to store our belongings has been gnawing at me for weeks, and while there is still much to be done, all I have to do is look into that gaping, empty garage....and I can breathe again.
But hey, I know it takes a village to store boxes. So here's to my fabulous mother-in-law, who just can't seem to fully rid herself of our nonsense, yet who is generous enough to keep offering up her attic (not to mention keeping us fed and hydrated!) . Here's to our friend Cade, who sacrificed an entire day (and probably 30 gallons of sweated out water) to help me with an obviously unpleasant task. And here's to Patrick, who was a massive help--and who kept the teenager-ish griping to a minimum.
And lastly, here's to being able to heave a small sigh of relief....
Sigh......
1 comment:
I am exhausted just reading this!
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