The Book of the City of Ghost Cats

It’s been a busy day in the office. I have to go in a few times a week. The rest of the time, I am back at my apartment dealing with the tyranny of my own things.

Moving to the UK means unique plugs for power cords. All the advice I am reading says not to even bother packing electronics. So I have a desktop computer to sell. We won’t need this Queen-sized bed. We won’t need my mother’s mahogany set of drawers that the TV sits on. Nor the TV itself. I won’t need the set of old plates I’d been carrying around, waiting to find a reason to upgrade. All the extra sheet sets, the clothing that doesn’t fit or is hanging, abeyant, in the closet. Just waiting for some sort feeling to roll off the worn-out sweaters to make it seem relevant and wearable again. All of that needs me to make a decision about its fate. And then to touch it and box it up and take it somewhere, something I’d have to do even if I were to try and hang onto it. All of it is my responsibility.

And that’s more than a fair bit overwhelming.

When my parents died last year, we had the challenge of cleaning out their house. While they weren’t hoarders by any stretch of the imagination, they worked long and hard hours in retail. And just like with me, and things accumulated. Things that might have had a use or a second life if anyone had remembered where they were. Or that they were. Things that were burdened upon us as gifts of love from other people moving out of other homes, all of whom thought we would benefit from their treasure. In the end, it took months of meticulous cleaning. And ultimately, a lot of it just was tossed.

I never thought I would come to this point, but the need for things has begun to leave me. To hold on to people and their affections through the material of their life. To feel like I owe it to someone to have access to a greeting card they sent me a decade ago. To have evidence of good grades, of being a beloved niece, of having once written a self-involved poem. Now, thinking through what has meaning to me and what I should to keep, there’s shockingly little that can’t be replaced by a visit to the shops in York.

In a flurry, I’ve been given a chance to face myself as I am. My own little Swedish Death Cleaning. The various ideas of who or what I might have been are now being considered. Maybe without my parents those personas stop existing. And there is a grieving for it all.

Not for old socks or empty notebooks, but for a girl who stood stock-still on this earth, waiting for confirmation.
Of who to be, how to be, how to tolerate the vast space between that and who she was. I was telling someone at work the news that I was leaving the U.S., moving to the UK. She gifted me with the only thing I want now…a glimpse of her own story. She came from Canada and had lived in France and in Boston. She’d up and come to Colorado on a whim 20 years ago and was so happy she did. I said I’m usually an introverted, quiet person, but this is just how it turned out. She said moving to another country wasn’t an introverted thing. New culture, new ways of being, no, it was a big swing.

Maybe she’s right. Big things are happening. Rivers are changing course. I don’t have to justify myself. I don’t need to hold onto my American self by clinging to the flotsam and jetsam of life. I can ride down the river, show up in a raincoat with a suitcase and be welcomed in. That girl and this one are dizzy with the truth of that.

What do you keep and what do you donate or sell as an expat? Do you hold onto things intending to return to them or have them shipped with you? Or do you accept that whatever you need, you’ll need to get there?