My daughter reports that she walked more than 15,000 steps and climbed 31 flights of stairs yesterday while moving into her new house, and I don't doubt it but I wish she'd sit down and put her feet up for a little while. She is, after all, pregnant. It's time to let someone else do the hard work! But I know how difficult that can be.
It was nearly 30 years ago that we moved houses while I was eight and a half months pregnant. I wouldn't have chosen just that date to move all our belongings halfway across the state, but at the time our lives were ruled by the Methodist hierarchy, which determined a single moving day for all pastoral families living in parsonages. It makes perfect sense: the previous pastor moves out of the parsonage one one day so that the new pastor can move in on the next, and if any painting or repair needs to be done in the interim, everyone just has to stay out of the way.
We moved houses under this system every two or three years and usually it worked well enough, but if you have a choice, I do not recommend moving while heavily pregnant and accompanied by a two-year-old.
The good news is that we didn't have quite as much stuff back then. Our kitchen was still full of wedding gifts in pretty good repair and our bookshelves were overstuffed, but we had no drum sets or giant boxes of Legos or dining tables capable of seating twelve, and we had only one or two desks instead of the six or eight we currently possess.
I'd been teaching the occasional adult education class at the local community college but at the time of the move I was unemployed, so I had spent about a month packing up everything we owned: pack a box, change a diaper; pack a box, take a nap; pack a box, sit down and put my feet up for a while. Of course I wasn't supposed to be doing any heavy lifting, but sometimes boxes needed to be moved and, lacking servants, my choice was to wait until my husband got home from work or do it myself. I didn't have a Fitbit so I can't tell you how many steps I walked or stairs I climbed or boxes I moved, but I'm sure it was way too many.
The worst part was when moving day arrived and I had to watch other people manhandle my things. Moving out was not too bad but then we got to the new house and people I didn't even know kept telling me, "Sit down and rest! I'll unpack this for you," or "You just sit there and tell me where you want this."
It's hard work sitting idly while everyone around you is carrying things and unpacking boxes, and it's much easier to put things where I want them myself than to try to explain my preferences to a total stranger. As helpful as church members may be, I don't necessarily want them unpacking my ratty old nightgowns or sorting my underwear.
The new house had no air conditioning and the summer heat was brutal, so eventually we found my daughter's swimsuit and filled up the little plastic kiddie pool, where she romped in the cold water while I soaked my tired, swollen feet and tried not to think about the chaos inside the house. I was supposed to be taking it easy, but I can't just sit back while there's work to be done. In fact, the only person in the family who was really taking it easy was my unborn son, who was so comfortable in utero that he decided to stay there a little longer than he should have and was eventually wrenched into the world two weeks late, shrivelled, scrawny, and gray.
After all the times we've moved, I understand his reluctance to shift homes: why disrupt a reasonably comfortable home, endure the pain and chaos of relocating, and then suffer all the trials and indignities of getting accustomed to a new place? Better to just stay in the womb!
Except we can't. We have to stretch our legs, expand our horizons, boldly go where no baby has gone before. Sometimes we just have to pack up and move. I just wish I could find a way to save my daughter a few of those steps.
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