08/25/2023
By Kate Stone Lombardi
Everyone says that moving is extremely stressful, and Lord knows, I agree. I’ve been packing up the house we’ve lived in for the last 35 years, in anticipation of moving.
But I hadn’t understood all the layers of stress. Because going through your stuff is essentially an archeological dig through different times in your life. One photo, or one letter, or one baked and glazed, lumpy clay bowl made by a child, is enough to send me flying back in time, and to experience all the emotions that come with that journey.
Today, I was packing in my office. You’d think that would be less provocative than other places, but it has it’s own psychological pull. I had kept dozens of magazines, because I had articles in each one. Mind you, I’ve published well over a thousand newspaper articles, but I’d thrown out those clippings years ago. I know they are available on line, though at this point in the Times archives. But the magazines are different. This was a more difficult culling. Many of the magazines don’t keep online archives.
Then there was publicity stuff around the book I wrote more than ten years ago now. I even came across posters announcing that I would be appearing to talk about my book at this library or at that event …Yikes! Who was that?
Hours and hours of work – no wait, years and years of work, okay, technically decades of work – were scattered across my office floor. I ended up tearing my articles out of the magazines and recycling the rest. Everything that’s left fits in three large boxes. I barely remember writing half of them.
So is this what a writing career comes down to – a few boxes which will likely stay in the basement of our new home anyway?
But then, you could say that about the entire house, where we raised a family. We’re packing up the rooms we lived in, but that family still exists, and I wrote what I wrote.
Still, this whole process is very disorienting.