The Things I Carry...

The movers came yesterday and did a weight/volume survey of my stuff that I'm shlepping over to Thailand. I am alloted 1500lbs to include in my shipment. I had no idea what that really meant in terms of number of boxes, etc. So I just filled Michelle and Scott's garage (Thanks guys! You are my saviors!) with all of my loot and hoped for the best. Tom, from Mayflower Transit, came over to do the survey. He was an energetic and cheery guy who used to be a secondary teacher in Wisconsin until moving to Portland where he fell into the moving business while waiting for an Oregon Teaching License to be issued (another casualty of TSPC). He has a soft spot for teachers, I know because he told me so. I liked Tom right away so I figured I could let him riffle through my personal belongings. He told me that I might want to consider including feminine hygiene products (i.e. tampons) in my shipment (they are hard to find in SE Asia). Despite the unexpected turn in conversation, I still felt at ease with Tom. He must have used the word feminine hygiene products at least 15 times in our conversation which seems like an awkwardly high number of times to talk about tampons. However, his tampon speech was done in such a fatherly way, Tom had won me over.
I had imagined him weighing all of my boxes with a giant scale. Instead of a scale, he used magic. Well, at least to my non-mathematical mind it looked like magic. He had a piece of paper in which he made tatch marks for each box. He then estimated the cubic feet of each box based on the size of the box and multiplied that number by 7lbs. It took him all of 15 minutes to estimate the amount of weight I had in 40 boxes. How is this possible? I kept wondering to myself. No scale, no scanner, he didn't even pick up a box...just asked me what was inside them. I am still skeptical of the accuracy. My final weight came in at 1,946lbs. I was over by 446lbs. Tom told me that he has this problem with most teachers. "You teachers are all alike" he said. "Books, you all have too many damn books, books are heavy like lead".
So now what? How do I shed some weight and lighten my load? Today, I went through each box again, and again I decided if I really needed the contents of these 40 boxes, the remnants of my life. Upon examining each object, I asked myself the following:

1. Have I used this in the past 6 months? (goodbye quesadilla maker!)
2. Will I need this in hot and humid Bangkok? (goodbye fleece jackets!)
3. Do I really want to read this heavy lead book again? (goodbye Holy Bible! Sorry mom..and God...okay never really read it in the first place)

Every now and again, I picked up an object that provoked feelings of loss. Reminders of people. People who were an important part of my life. People who are now gone. I found myself throwing these objects out quickly. Not sure if that's a healthy reaction; to detach completely, but it seemed to work for me. No object, no cry. Moving is much more than a physical chore. It's shedding your identity, which can feel like death and birth all at the same time.