It was last year around this time when my brother announced he wanted to move. The town he called home was inexpensive and rural, an easy commute to work., the kind of place you might drive through on the way to somewhere else. It’s sole nod to modernity was a shiny new library nestled into a strip of haggard three story homes, sad strip malls and crumbling parking lots.
He wanted out. His wife wanted a baby. They struck a bargain. He began furiously searching for a new home immediately after she announced her pregnancy. He decided New Hampshire was the place for him and periodically he’d send me listings – big, rambling old farm houses, acres of land, mountain views, prices so low it almost seemed like a misprint. Weeks later he pulled the trigger. One could argue he was rushing, but he made up his mind. He was leaving, details be damned.
The day before the big move I head over to lend a hand. The four of us (two grown men, a pregnant woman and an eight-year-old girl) work into the night boxing up piles of loose belongings and eating pizza. The movers are scheduled to start at dawn. It’ll be a new start in life for them. They’re excited. I’m excited too … and envious.
The sun is setting the next day when my phone rings. My brother is exasperated. The movers left half the furniture at his old house. “New owners moving in tomorrow … I don’t know what to do.”
This is the part where I talk about purpose and goals. It had been so long since I felt useful, so long since I could made a firm decision and really “do” something – something worthwhile, something useful. That energy and potential so coiled tightly inside me finally had an outlet. So much inertia and stagnation and waiting and waiting. Finally. ACTION!
“Hang on. I’m coming up.” I’m in my car a few minutes later. “Siri, give me directions to …”
It’s dark when I finally pull into the driveway. All the lights are on inside the tall yellow house. Piles of boxes, rolled rugs, a few pieces of furniture are stacked in the middle of the big empty living. My brother paces back and forth in the kitchen talking on the phone. The moving company want another $1000 to ship the rest of his stuff. The conversation ends unresolved. “We’re fucked!”
No … we can do this. You and I. I know we can.
Early the next day I rent a 20-foot U-Haul truck. Fortified with cups of iced coffees, a box of donuts and my brother’s righteous rage we careen down the highways back to his old house. With the help of a neighbor, we load the remaining furniture and boxes into the truck. I roam through the empty rooms scanning for anything we missed. Here is my niece’s bedroom with the pale green walls. And there’s the unfinished basement where they discovered a spotted salamander the size of a child’s slipper living in the dank gloom. And here is the dining room where the wobbly table lay – the one my extended family would squeeze around for birthdays and our not-so-traditional Easter buffets.
It’s early afternoon when we say our last, last goodbye to the little red farm house near the pond where the Spring peepers sang so loudly my brother needed to close the windows at night to sleep.
The ride back feels lazy and carefree. The only real commitment now is to unload the truck and make sure its back by tomorrow morning. We ride with the windows rolled down and hot highway air swirls around the inside of the truck. My brother does most of the talking now. I stare at the shimmering horizon and listen and laugh.
“I’ll buy you dinner … anything you want.”
We had pizza that night after unloading the truck. In some ways this was as close to a perfect day as I had had in a long time. It was the kind that’s become part of my personal history – something he and I may reminisce about years from now. “Remember how you backed up that great big truck into my driveway. I didn’t think you could do it …”
The next morning I lay in my sleeping bag and wonder what’s next. This situation where I could make a real decisive difference … and do some good for someone is at an end.
I can already feel that terrible inertia creeping in … and it makes me sad.