A Moving Tale

When I finally left for my first apartment, everything I owned fit nicely into one trip uptown in a rented van . . . except for the desk, the one thing I left for my sister, but even that was more out of frustration than a lack of space. Three years on and I needed more truck, the next size up to something called a cube van. No great surprise, since I’d spent too much of that time filling my rooms with furniture, yet striking how my entire existence could still be contained in a remarkably small cube, one perfect unit of stuff.

The trick to that particular move was to collapse all my IKEA furniture back to its original form and to engage the help of three friends who didn’t much like each other. Two were in it for the promise of curry and beer, the third for the opportunity to boss us around for an afternoon, which he did very well. I’ve never seen a truck fill so fast, the stuff packed so tightly there was room left for two of my crew to sit comfortably in the back for the trip downtown, one in my wing chair, sharing a smoke.