Moving days

     The other day while waiting at a traffic light at one of Charleston’s busiest intersections, I watched one of those huge United or Allied Van Lines trucks cross in front of me from the opposite direction.  As it made its way down the highway after gingerly maneuvering through the intersection, I thought immediately about what was likely in that enormous moving van  — quite possibly the lifetime possessions of a family either coming to Charleston or leaving to start a new life elsewhere.  I remember how exciting it was when we moved to our first real house in the suburbs of New Orleans in 1961.  It was a brand-new brick house with big bay windows and a small front porch, nestled among live oak trees.  What a thrill for a ten-year-old to witness the movers unloading our furniture and boxes into this grand new "home."  That was fifty years ago this October.  I can hardly believe it.  I recall to this day the "new house" smell inside.   We had witnessed the entire construction process and trips out to the new house before we moved in were always anticipated and enjoyed.

     That was the big moving day I remember from my youth.  My parents lived there 31 years.  After my father died in 1992, my mother sold the house about a year later and moved to Charleston,  marking the end of an era.   I lived in that new house for seven years, but when you are young, it seemed an endless expanse of time, flowing by as I endured the trials and tribulations of adolescence and the passage from elementary school through junior high and on to high school.  I was in the class of 1969.

     Moving days after that were much less formal affairs.  In the years after college, I lived first in an old and timeless boarding house in Columbia, SC, in a upstairs room filled with antique furniture.  The move from New Orleans to Columbia the summer after college consisted of driving off to my future in a fully packed yellow Volkswagen convertible with a red, ten-speed bike strapped on the back.

      (Long-time and faithful readers, please forgive me if I have traversed some of this same ground in earlier entries, but from time to time, it is nice to revisit memories that I have previously recorded here.  And there have been a lot of them slnce 1999).

     As I got a bit more settled and acquired some furniture, my next big move involved renting a Ryder van, and, with the help of my best friends, loading up and heading for North Carolina.   I remember the morning of that momentous move, starting, early in the day, with a stop at McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin, hash browns, orange juice and coffee.   This transition was a major milestone because it marked the first move to a town and job that involved notably more responsibilities in my chosen profession of journalism.   The small college town where I worked was idyllic, but the job turned out to be short-lived, and I returned to South Carolina just eight months later, considerably older and wiser, but still idealistic and more than a bit apprehensive about continuing in newspaper work.

     What followed during the 1980s was a long odyssey of graduate schools, teaching, traveling the country and wandering in and out of employment as I seemed doggedly determined, or fated, to remain without a stable job or anchorage in my life, without that place to truly call "home."  I didn’t find it until 1995, in my mid-forties.  Now, at 60, I cannot even conceive of how I, of all people, survived that personal diaspora of continual upheaval and uprootedness in search of one final place to settle down.

     Being single and never having had a family, it was easy in one sense to move because I could give away all my furniture and belongings and start over from scratch with a car full of my history and material legacy in papers and books.

     Tonight, as I again think about that huge moving van, I am reminded how different my life has been from those who owned their own homes, furnished them, and raised families in them.  I always rented and had a minimal amount of furniture.   But I can say for certain that whatever form my single, solitary moves took, and whatever the goal or lack of one, they were equally momentous and life-changing events.  I like to think I enjoyed my fair share of freedom in between the times of despondency and uncertainty.  Moving day, no matter what, always signified hope, a new dawn and starting over.   That’s a reasonable summary of those now long-ago experiences, for I can recall each one of them and how my life changed each time.