Moving Days

I bought a house! I finally have a place to permanently call home. It's a big enough house that I could open a Bed and Breakfast and make an income to supplement my art. It is rural enough that I can feel “away from it all” and have chickens and a big garden. It is close to phenomenally beautiful beaches and wildlife. What a dream come true!

I gave my notice at the place I was renting in Hamilton. It was an old row house from 1898 that was 14' wide at its widest and had three small floors of living space. A lot of stairs. Fantastic neighbours. Margot on one side, an absolutely lovely and kind woman just a bit older than me. On the other side, a Somali family, multi-generational and with only one or two English speakers. They were always so graciously grateful for the goodies from my garden

My neighbours and I had been faced with months of construction both in front and behind our houses as the city replaced water mains and dug up the street again and again, using their big machines every day, rattling the glass in the windows and dishes in the cupboards. Behind the row of houses was Central Park. Or what used to be a park. Or maybe it still was a park, but what we could see all summer was not the view of the lake that I saw when I moved there in January, but the 30' high pile of dirt that was our view all spring, summer and fall, obscuring the lake and obliterating any view of the park.

Packing always takes longer than you think it will. As supremely organized as I am, there is a need to pack boxes as efficiently as possible. The less airspace, the less possibility of damage. Thank yous abound to the beautiful Laidlaw family in more ways than one, but they pretty much took care of my entire box requirements. My sister deserves thanks as well, for her kitchen remodel and the bags of bubblewrap and packing materials that made their way to me.

My experience with moves is that local moves do not have to be packed as fastidiously. You can come back and make another trip for left behind items if necessary. Long distance moves require a certain particularity with packing boxes, and bins. No loose items. With any move, there is a great purging of “stuff”, though somehow the remainders always seem to fill the next place quite comfortably.

In 2015 my daughter and I moved from Squamish, BC to Calgary, AB. It was a move I'd been eager for (not to Calgary, just a move in general), made possible by her acceptance into the School of Alberta Ballet. We'd been in Squamish 8 years, moved once while there, and while it was the perfect place to raise my girl from Grade 1-8, it had not been as kind to me. I never felt I belonged. I felt very clearly the socio-economic divide between the married families and the handful of single parents.

The Squamish river ran near our house. It was my favourite place. The oceanfront on Howe Sound was breathtaking, as were the mountains on the rare sunny days when the clouds didn't shroud the Sound and the town in an almost claustriphobically low cover. I loved the wildlife and the proximity to an immense wilderness, though I never felt able to truly explore. I remembered my time in the desert, when I could just leave my house and start walking to the next hill, and then the next hill... Squamish was surrounded by so much dense, grizzly and cougar-filled forest, that it seemed unfathomable that I would take my young daughter alone into that, without the proper survival skills.

But yes, the move from Squamish to Calgary was executed at a time when Maggie was already in Calgary at Alberta Ballet Summer School. Peter, my dear friend, came with me and drove the U-Haul, hauling my old car containing the two cats and my plants. The truck was packed by a bevy of helpful neighbourhood men. We had that truck packed so there was not one square inch of airspace. It took four men to hold everything in place while the door was shut. We had the instructions to brake hard when we got to our destination so that everything could shift forward slightly and would not come crashing down on us as we opened the door. We did exactly that, and the two movers helping us unload in Calgary commented approvingly (and amazedly) on the tightness of the packing job.

Back in Hamilton, preparing for the Nova Scotia move (and moving my daughter into her own place), again I purged. Everything was picked up and juggled in the hands to gauge its weight and its moving worth. And then I was gifted a couch, a love seat, an antique secretary's desk and a (very heavy) gazebo.

I inquired into movers, which brought back endless phone calls and estimates of weight and distance to destination. It is not a regulated industry, and there are endless horror stories of overcharging, losing or breaking items with no recompense. The more recent stories included the new Covid-produced “Atlantic Bubble” restrictions. There was one couple who could not get approval for their household goods to be transported across the border from Quebec to New Brunswick, so the moving company dumped their possessions.

I came to the thought that I could just move myself with a U-Haul again, and moving helpers on each end. The timeline would be tighter. I would have to coordinate the moving helpers and the amount of time the truck and vehicle trailer could remain on our busy downtown street while I did a final clean of the house and a move-out inspection with my landlord. But still, I would have everything with me and there would be no fear of losing anything. So I booked a 20ft U-Haul and a vehicle transport trailer.

During the move from Squamish to Calgary, Peter drove the truck and car trailer for the most part, while I kept him entertained and fed. It was a two day drive, so we stopped for the night at a motel in Sicamous, BC, the halfway point, planning on sneaking the two cats in. We pulled into Sicamous in the dark, found the motel and drove the truck and trailer around the back only to discover there was no way to turn around. After much directing (me) and swearing (Peter), he managed to get the truck and trailer turned around and able to get out. I don't know if I've ever stayed in such a rundown place. Ever. But it was late and we had a full day of driving ahead, so we dealt with it. I took the cats out of the car.

Shadow had peed all over himself and needed a bath and Kitten just ran and hid after being shown the location of his food and kitty litter. That was fine until, in the morning, we were ready to leave, we couldn't find him. An hour after the search began, after flipping the bed over, and scouring the closet and bathroom, I unearthed him, crouched on the pipes under the bathroom sink like the person hiding in a public bathroom stall, crouched on top of the toilet so as not to be seen by someone peering under the door.

It was the vehicle trailer, hitching and unhitching it, and the lack of any real confirmation that there would be people to help me unload at the other end that got me worrying about driving a big truck and trailer on my own. I researched the drive, the tight spots, the motels that had to be drive-through accessible. The traffic on the 401 had me second guessing my abilities. I googled pictures and watched videos of driving that truck with a trailer on the back, and envisioned myself on the 401 not being able to change lanes quickly enough and having to exit onto busy city thoroughfares with no way to turn around and ending up somewhere in the outer reaches of Scarborough for the rest of my life, living in a U-Haul truck on the side of the road with my cat.

I was not sleeping, and trying hard to continue to eat properly and do my daily yoga practice. Every night my dreams were of driving the truck. Of the constant, heart-pounding stress I remembered from driving a motorhome I had bought, fixed and sold a few years ago and taken airborne, over not one, but two speed bumps. On each heavy landing, I envisioned the water and propane connections dislodging, and the vehicle bursting into flames as I crossed through the Crowsneck Pass in the Alberta Rockies with my girl in the vehicle with me.

The on-going construction in front of our house in Hamilton was the kicker. Two weeks before moving day, the city was finally planning on finishing the road and gave residents notice of the date, which happened to be the date of my move. Calls to the city and the construction foreman assuring me that I would be able to access the road that day were not enough to alleviate my stress. On a friend's suggestion, I called a relocation company and everything fell into place for about the same amount of money as the U-haul and a whole helluva lot less stress.

Then it was two days before the move. That evening, I did a last load of laundry. While it washed I went back upstairs to pack more. The plan was to take the last load of clean laundry and pack into boxes what didn't need to go with me, and pack my suitcase with the rest. The plan was to vacuum the big rug in the basement and roll it and then pack the vacuum.

At 11:00pm, I went downstairs to put the clean wash into the dryer, stepped off the last step, and into water. “NO!!!” I wailed. As I waded farther into the basement the water got deeper. And at the other side of the basement were all my packed boxes of books, sitting in the water. The big rug, had thankfully soaked up a great deal of the water, but was now a heavy, sodden mess that I would not be vacuuming and rolling as planned. Hands on my head, I looked around, repeating, “NO! No! No! No! No!”, and then I started moving. Boxes were carried through the water and stacked at the other side of the basement where it was dry.

One by one, the stacks moved, the bottom, wet boxes put on their sides to drain. Box by box, I talked to myself, crying through my exhaustion, so hard that at times it was difficult to see, “It's ok. You can do this. It's ok. You can do this. No, no, no, no, no!” I was not going to have the time to open all of the wet boxes, nor did I have more boxes to repack them into, and still had the rest of the house to finish packing.

It was now 11:30pm, and there was an over an inch of water on the floor in some spots, and a soaked rug. All of my towels were packed, other than my two shower towels and a couple of facecloths. So I ran upstairs treading water everywhere, grabbed my two towels and a 5 gallon bucket. I laid the big towels right into the water and immediately they were saturated. I realized right away it was going to be difficult to wring out the big towels over and over again, and I would waste time struggling with them. So I grabbed the 3 facecloths and started wringing them into the bucket one by one.

Still crying, I talked endlessly to myself, “You can do this. You are so strong. You're amazing. You can do this. You are the strongest person I know, Kim. Look at you. You can do this.” Facecloth after facecloth filled the 5 gallon bucket almost to the top, and I took it out the back to dump it. Thank God for a walkout basement! Three more buckets full and I was down to a saturated rug. Using the towels, I wrung them, heavy, and difficult, over and over, until the skin around my thumbnails pulled away from the beds and the muscles on my hands and forearms screamed at me to stop. With the last bucket dumped outside, and as much water removed from the rug as would come out, I hauled it, wet and heavy outside and up the stairs to the deck outside the kitchen and hung it over the side to drain, praying it would not rain. Back downstairs, I cleaned up the last of the water on the floor, so tired. It was 2:30am. I would have to be up at 7am at the latest in order to finish everything before the movers came the following morning.

The next day, I enlisted the help of my daughter and her boyfriend to tape boxes and shelves. The wet, now dry boxes, the cardboard soft, wavy and misshapen, were taped completely around. I asked for the help of my mom and my stepdad to pack. They listened to me have a full-on meltdown while they stood by helplessly. They brought food. I will be eternally grateful to my mom for her unceasingly listening to me doubt everything I have ever done and in the next breath, be overly excited about my endless prospects and ideas for this new, old house. And to Bill for listening to my mom worry about me. The rug came inside and hung by a heater over the kitchen table and chairs.

Somehow, somehow, a truck came, and it all got taken away, to be delivered to my house in Nova Scotia in 2-3 weeks. Three days later, I would be up early to pack the coolers and the cat in my car and drive away.

I was woken by the road construction crew in the early hours to move my car, as they were, after 7 months of digging, fixing, re-digging, etc, surfacing the road that morning. Right then. I knew I had a Tetris car packing job ahead of me. I asked them to give me an hour.

An hour and a half later, the fridge and freezer were emptied into coolers, the car was packed. I got everything in, including a kitty litter and houseplants in the front, perennials in the back, 2 five gallon buckets of paint, 2 gallons of other paint, 2 gallons of drywall compound, paint equipment and tools, a ladder, cleaning supplies, food for two weeks of quarantine, and the kitchen items and bedding needed for the two weeks before my furniture arrives. There is a shovel in there to plant the perennials when I arrive, as I had to take them out of the pots I had put them in to move them when I figured out there would NOT be room. Instead, they’re in plastic bags with their little root balls. There were candles, flashlights, my computer, and of course, the cat.

I'd be without internet for a bit, so what did I bring for fun during my two weeks of quarantine? I brought my yoga mat, of course. I forgot to leave out a book for myself so I brought the didgeridoo I made when I lived in Arizona.

By the time I locked the front door for the last time, I so looked forward to the next three days of just sitting on my ass and driving, so thankful it was not behind the wheel of a 35' truck/trailer combo.

I met my brother at a Tim Horton's in Scarborough, just off the 401 and we had a goodbye coffee.

Made it to Drummondville, Quebec that night, even more thankful to be driving my car. The highway through Montreal had so many tight lane changes, and exits and volume of traffic that I could absolutely not have done in a big truck.

I had the best sleep I had had in months. Again in the morning the cat was hard to find. Under the bed we played the game of staying just out of reach, until I grabbed my extendable painting pole from the car and herded him out and into his crate.

As I drove North through Quebec toward New Brunswick, it started to snow lightly. I had forgotten that parts of Quebec are mountainous, ski areas. What a country. Huge. This vast land of mostly wilderness is amazing to behold from coast to coast. It makes us a different sort of people. Hardy. Connected to the land.

I was overcome with patriotic emotion and started singing a song I was taught in Grade 8 music class:

"I have walked across the Strand

On the Grand Banks of Newfoundland,

Lazed at the ridge of the Miramichi,

Seen the waves tear and roar

At the stone coast of Labrador,

Watched them roll back to the Great Northern Sea.

Chorus:

From Vancouver Island to the Alberta Highlands,

Across the prairies, the Lakes to Ontario's towers,

From the sound of Mount Royal's Chimes (clap)

Out to the Maritimes,

Something to sing about this land of ours.”

Next: First Days, or Trial by Fire and Water