I finished my bath and saw that the rust-orange towel had molted all over my body.

I was covered with tufts of orange fur. It was not a good look, and it felt worse than it looked. Worse yet, it gave me a taste of what the next two months would be like.

My husband, Peter, is a man of many systems, and I have learned to appreciate this over the six years we have been married. He has a particular way to do nearly everything, from making coffee, to washing the dishes, to ordering food stuffs. I have found, by and large, it is best just to stay out of the way and things operate very well.

This brings us to moving.

Peter’s idea is that it makes sense to get our possessions out of the house before we begin the painting, minor repairs and deep cleaning. As we have already purchased our new place, Peter says we should ship all our belongings, visit my parents (finally!), and then return to a clutter-free house and do the work needed before putting it on the market.

I’m guessing you have already figured out the weakness in this plan.

“It will be like camping!” I reassured myself. But one bath with the orange towel has me reconsidering. The fluffy white towel I have grown accustomed to has already been packed and the orange “camping towel,” which will be pitched when we leave, has taken its place.

“Peter, I’m covered with fuzz,” I reported mournfully.

“That’s a very old towel,” he agreed.

“I don’t think I can use this towel for two months,” I clarified.

Peter gave me a look that indicated he thought I might be a bit of a whiner.

“Then don’t,” he said. “You use the blue towel.”

I knew the blue towel he meant. It was navy blue with a huge bleach stain on it. This was a generous gesture on Peter’s part. The blue towel is an absolute gem compared to the orange towel.

“What will you use?” I asked.

“I’ll use a small towel.”

“How small?”

“Just ... small!” Peter said, as if I was getting a little too nosy. “I’ll use a hand towel!”

I couldn’t think of any decent hand towels roaming around at this point in the packing.

“You mean like a tea towel?”

“I’ll be fine!” Peter said.

Now I have images of Peter getting out of the shower and drying himself with some tiny relic, with tulips in the corners embroidered long ago by an elderly aunt. And I fear the worst is yet to come.

Strategic lamps have disappeared, leaving corners of the house in utter darkness. I did not point this out to Peter. He would only reassure me that the days are getting longer.

My biggest concern is that my desk, where I spend nearly all day, will be traveling without me. Peter is leaving behind his awful-looking desk and says I can use that. I am not excited. His desk has some sort of tower on top of it, and a slide-out drawer where my keyboard is supposed to sit. I have no idea what will stop the drawer from sliding back in as I type, and I have tried not to consider this too deeply.

But, of course, we will get by. And I comfort myself by imagining how overwhelmed by luxuries I will be in our new place -- once we finally get there.

Full-sized towels! Light in every room! My desk!

And Peter will get to work, implementing new systems for our new life together.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

“Oh my gosh. I don’t want to open that box.”

Moving furniture and books and clothing is easy. It’s moving memories that is hard.

I am going through the last of my boxes. I used to say I was not a packrat. I thought I was more like my mother than my dad. My dad might tuck a piece of wood away, thinking it would find a use someday. My mother would be of the opinion that it’s easier to buy a board when (and if) it was needed. Generally, it wasn’t.

This approach keeps my parents’ house very tidy -- with the possible exception of one small room in the basement where my dad keeps his wood collection.

It turns out, I am not at all like my mother.

I have filed things away that will never find any purpose whatsoever other than to remind me of things I did and used to care about that I no longer do. For the last few days, I’ve been emptying the box.

Photos from when we used to take real photos, letters from people who cared about me, certificates indicating I accomplished something or another, reviews that mentioned my name, currency from foreign countries I will never visit again, 100+-year-old spectacles (why?), a lovely handheld fan my former mother-in-law gave me, clever things I wrote when I was in the fifth grade (really?), recipes in my grandmother’s handwriting, and even (I am embarrassed to admit) my old teddy bear.

My teddy bear feels crunchy. His exterior is badly corroded by time, I can’t imagine what has happened to his insides.

All of it is in the last box, waiting to be emptied.

Some of it is easy to understand wanting to hang onto. I am scanning some of the photos and my grandmother’s recipes, and they will move onto the great cloud in the sky. (That is where I imagine the cloud, not being savvy with computer matters.) They will likely get no more attention on the cloud than they did in the box, but they will gather less dust and -- most importantly -- they won’t need to be moved.

But still I worry that some of this -- some potshard from my past -- will be needed. It will be necessary to remember something I did or someone I knew or something that was important to me and, if I lose it, I will lose some part of myself.

The fact that this is nonsense does not lessen the feeling.

I’ve heard the mantra that we should keep only what “sparks joy,” and I cannot claim that anything in that box is sparking joy. In fact, the existence of that box is causing me a fair amount of angst.

Instead, I ask myself, “Would I experience great pain if I threw this away?”

Generally, the answer is, “No,” and the item is tossed. But sometimes, for no logical reason, I hold something in my hand, and I feel I need it. I need the fan my mother-in-law gave me, I need those 100+-year-old spectacles and, yes, it is possible that I might still need my teddy bear -- even though he has gone all crunchy on me. Heck, I’ve gotten a little crunchy myself.

It’s not a perfect system. But the contents of the box are shrinking and the guilt for hanging onto so much stuff is dissolving, and I feel a sense of satisfaction, sending one after another of my grandmother’s recipes through the scanner.

I just found her recipe for chocolate frosting. I’m going to make it sometime soon.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

The tree was lying on its side when I got to it.

It was a nice-looking pine tree, fluffy and full and as tall as me. The strong winds coupled with some unstable footing had caused it to fall over. This seemed too sad to simply walk by. I went over to the tree and, with a little effort, got it standing upright again. It looked much happier. I finished my walk, feeling I had done my part.

The next day, it was lying on its side again.

I examined it more closely. It had been relying on the rotting remains of another fallen pine to stand upright and the old log had finally given way, taking the young pine with it. I set my hiking poles down and hauled a couple of large rocks lying nearby over to the base of the pine, propping it back up.

The next day, it had fallen over again. This was going to be a bigger project than I expected. I hauled a lot of rocks over and piled them at the base of the young tree. “There! That should hold you.” That night, as I sat on the patio, I noticed how the wind was picking up. “I bet my tree has fallen again,” I thought.

I was right.

So, on the fourth day, I found another downed log, similar to the one my tree had been relying on, but not as rotten, and hauled it over. I jammed one end into the soil and propped the other end against the narrow tree trunk. A family of bikers nearby watched me curiously, as I piled rocks on top of the log to further secure it.

“Just helping this little tree!” I explained. They smiled, assuming I was crazy, I’m sure.

Yesterday, I returned to the tree. It was standing upright. “Hurray!” I said aloud. At that moment, I remembered my husband, Peter, and I had decided to move.

So far, this decision has resulted in little action on our part. But yesterday Peter ordered a moving van, so presumably things will become very real very soon.

We have lots of good reasons to move.

My parents and my sister and most of my relatives live in the Midwest, as does most of Peter’s family. Particularly during the pandemic, we realized how much we missed family, how many occasions we had missed, and how quickly time passes.

And so, we have decided to make the move and we are both filled with mixed feelings because it is hard to leave a place, no matter how many reasons there are to be somewhere else.

Standing in front of this little tree, hoping it would now become a huge, towering pine, I felt a small pang because I would never know. That is the hardest thing about moving. I will never know what I will miss, not living here.

But I was never going to know.

This tree may outlive me by hundreds of years, or it may perish by the end of the summer. I will never know this, nor will I know what any path I have not taken might hold.

Instead, I imagine, because that is all I can do to keep myself upright. I imagine spending my mother’s next birthday with her and I imagine going to the theater with my oldest friend and I imagine seeing my nephew graduate.

And, in the back of my mind, I imagine this tree standing tall for hundreds of years after I am dead, on stable footing because of me.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION