A-million-decisions-a-day

Today was loading day. Sparkling wine ready in fridge for sundowner time when we kick back and say, "Phew! All done, possessions safely on their way to NZ". I wish! I have had the most gruelling week that I possibly have ever experienced. Frantic packing and sorting and THROWING AWAY so many papers and slips and mementos I haven't thrown away in the last three moves. Finding homes for our cat (and three other cats that appeared on our property and stayed, in the last month!). The best way I can describe this last month and especially the last two weeks is: a million-decisions-a-day.

When you prepare the contents of your abode for shipping and you have been "making a home" for the last 10 years, you accumulate stuff: some valuable, some useful, some precious, some meaningful, some sentimental and some of it just stuff you might need in future. DECIDING what you will need, and what not, what you will want and what not, WITHOUT knowing where you will be staying, what it will look like, etc, makes taking a single decision a tough task. Now, imagine that you touch everything you currently have in your house and ask yourself, "Will I need/want this in my house/life of unknown dimensions?" Then, add two fragile, unsettled children below the age of 7 to the mix, who want your CONSTANT reassurance that you still love them and won't forget to pack them.

Back to loading day. The day the packers load all your stuff you have decided to take with to its new destination (which, by the way, does not exist yet). In order for the packers to load all our stuff, they need to bubble wrap EVERYTHING.

This is very cool on Day One, which was Monday the 18th of August 2008. They arrived, ready with kilometres of bubble wrap, clear duct tape, a mountain of boxes and a friendly disposition. You quickly notice that they have done this before. You are most impressed to see them flip over a dining room table on a huge piece of bubble wrap, filling up the cavity with clothes, curtains, carpets and close it up with more bubble wrap. The result: a heavy, squarish blob of bubble wrap. Soon the contents of your whole house are transformed into heavy blobs of bubble wrap with cryptic descriptions like: "Mr WP Louw's step leader (sic)" or "Bed, toys and clothing".

Sometime during the day a man from the shipping company arrives to "finalise insurance and payment of the shipping". You listen to the options, and one option very clearly stands out: insure only for total loss, at 3.5% of what you reckon the total value of your contents amounts to. You sign, you smile, laugh at his jokes, and just before he leaves you ask the one question that has been bugging you the last two weeks: "Do you think our stuff will fit in the container?" The answer you get is a reassuring non-answer, something to the effect of: "I'm sure it will all work out, the packers, loaders and person who determined the volume of your content are all very experienced."

At 3pm they leave your property with more than half the contents of your house still unwrapped and a nagging thought starts to make its appearance in the back of your mind: "What if they don't finish wrapping before loading day?" - but you quickly dismiss that one with, "It's their problem, not mine - Ha!"

Tuesday the 19th of August. The packers arrive late. They seem unconcerned. This is strangely not reassuring. They pack, they wrap, they leave. By the end of Day Two, there is still a significant amount of content to wrap - and tomorrow the container arrives. Still, you reckon, "Their problem, not mine."

Loading Day. Container arrives early. It looks terrifically cool, it is finally happening! It also looks horribly small, it won't all fit!!!! "But no", you tell yourself, "leave it to the professionals, this is no time to panic". The packers arrive late again. They start wrapping the rest of the contents and after about an hour the supervisor strolls over and asks if they really should wrap the rest, because their dedicated "loader" is convinced that everything won't fit. So if we could just indicate what we want to take with and what to leave it would help. F.......................K!

You panic, you remain calm, you panic, you look for someone to blame, you phone the shipping company head office, you blast the poor secretary who sounded too blasé in answering the phone in the first place. She promises that the relevant person will phone you back. They don't. You panic some more. The supervisor asks you again, should they continue wrapping or leave it?

At this point you reach enlightenment and realise the value of non-attachment. You decide that you are not attached to your identity of being a nice person and just have to deal with this crisis that seems to be of monumental proportions.

So, half the container is loaded with amorphous blobs, contents diverse and unspecified. What is left to be loaded is all presumably valuable, useful, sentimental - after all, why otherwise would you have kept it? Something has to give. You have no time to decide, for as you are thinking about it, the packers are loading blobs into the container, slowly filling it up, possibly with stuff of lower priority than the stuff that won't fit in the end. You are on a rollercoaster and cannot get off. The only way out is through. Make a decision with insufficient information, and deal with the consequenses. Then do it again, and again, and again.

It is now half past 11 at night. I had my sparkling wine today at 10pm while writing this post. It was a lovely wine. What pleasure one can find in small mercies.

Willem