Grave Considerations: Moving, Part Three

So. I was recently packing up my toy collection, specifically Masterpiece MP-06 Skywarp, and I began thinking about how many times I have moved certain pieces in said collection. For that Skywarp, this will be the fourth time. Each time, I have transformed him back to jet mode and put him in his box. As may be expected, his box is pretty ragged at this point. Last year in the fall I began throwing away boxes I’d been hanging on to, and the Masterpiece boxes escaped that purge but not notice. I am kind of thinking that once we complete this move and figure reemerge from their cardboard prisons, that those boxes may be next on the chopping block.

Even the smaller, more modern Masterpiece boxes. I packed up Exhaust and Loud Pedal into their boxes, but put Toys R Us Bluestreak in a plastic bag, because his box was far too large to justify packing for what amounts to be such a small figure. Toys R Us Soundwave as well.

I guess what the core thought is here is that of nostalgia. I am a nostalgic man by nature, and, as I know my wife can attest to, if I can attach even a slight significance to an occurrence or an object, it will morph into a memory that I will keep forever. I know that’s how memory works, but I’m talking about things far more minute. I will pick up a figure and remember when and where I bought it because my wife was with me. And while it may not be terribly unusual that I would conflate things I love, like my wife and toys, this extends to all levels of my life. Just yesterday, we were starting to pack up our kitchen, and we had started a box of glassware and dishes to take to Goodwill. You know, because over time you amass a whole lot of cups and plates and stuff that you know you don’t need, but you hold on to because you can, essentially. The cabinet is big enough to hold them, so they really don’t register even if you own them for five years and have never once used them. My wife suggested this or that be added to the  Goodwill box, and I could recite practically an exact history of our possession of whatever it was, because somehow it was relevant to our time together. (And yes, I know: they’re bowls or something mundane. This power of mine is a true curse, and I don’t say that as a joke. –mr)

But it runs deeper than just “Oh, I remember this. . . “ Packing MP Skywarp a few weekends ago, I remembered the day he arrived, where I was and what I was doing. It was a Friday, and I’d just gotten home from work. The band I was playing in at the time had a show that evening, and I’d only gotten a few minutes to examine Skywarp. I remember taking him out of the box, and turning him over in my hands in jet mode, before deciding that my band could wait a little bit, and I transformed him, this Masterpiece mold still new at the time, believe it or not. And I remember being on stage, four or five songs into our set, wishing I was at home checking out Masterpiece Skywarp instead. Wild.

Masterpiece Soundwave brought about a similar nostalgia trip, as he arrived the day after we came home from our vacation to Colorado, which was also a day before our cat came home to live with us.

I think a big part of moving is facing the memories of both places and things. I caught my normally non-emotional wife getting verklempt over our move because our current apartment is the only home with us that our cat has known, and so we have memories of him walking around his new home for the first time and sitting on the couch for the first time and spending his entire first night in his new home meowing because we had closed the door of our bedroom. He meowed the entire night because we had left him out of our bedroom. I get misty eyed just thinking of that.

(This morning, my wife reported that the cat spent time early this morning vigorously headbutting me and meowing at me to wake me up so I’d pet him, a normal occurance. But, apparently my Saturday night was so much fun that I was unable to be roused from sleep. –mr)  

But personally, and seriously, I find all of this nostalgia hard to deal with at times. Since I normally find myself reminiscing or fondly remembering the old days, you’d think I’d be pretty used to this, and better practiced in withstanding the real thick parts. But I’m not, and some times, whether good or bad, nostalgia trips are accompanied by a literal physical component, a feeling of sinking into some unseeable but all-encompassing fog of memory, actual feelings of the Past. Each time we have moved, I find myself torn between competing forces of excitement for what lies ahead and that sweet sorrow for what we’re leaving behind.

The last two days, I’ve found myself tracing mental footsteps around our new apartment, having only seen it once for maybe half an hour but remembering it so clearly because it was destined to be our new home. I think about making what seems like a long trek from bedroom to kitchen to start my coffee, and looking over my shoulder and realizing I just traversed three rooms instead of the short hallway that said journey currently takes me through. I think of unpacking all of these boxes, reassembling our library and our movie collection and our action figure displays. I think of seeing the new furniture we bought last week filling out rooms that are currently just empty, but will soon be filled with life. I wonder if our cat will like our new couch. And it’s a pretty strange dichotomy of feels.   

This is always so much work. It is always so stressful. But, two weeks from right now, we will wake up for the first time in our new apartment, ready to make it a home and fill it with memories, both ones we brought with us and new ones yet to be made. I’m excited.

I just wish we didn’t still have so much to pack before we got there.