The Incredible Lightness of Moving

By David Drucker

Pam is really excited about the idea of casting off all these old and inherited posessions. She sees them as encumbrances: We never use that second pitcher. We’ve used that Fondue pot 3 times in 15 years. I never liked those candlesticks or that set of cups. (Some of that was from me, too) Away they go, tossed aside like so much extra clothing by a person entering a nudist colony. Pam claims that she won’t miss any of them, and I’m hoping that she doesn’t change her mind. I’m certainly not someone who hangs on to every item I’ve ever come to own, but I have to admit that it will be some time before I can be as ruthless regarding the shedding of memorabilia as she can be.

As we sell off these possessions (often at just a hair above giving them away), our poundage on the van moving across country goes down and down. Soon it will be just the living room furniture, some books, computer equipment, and some small appliances. This is good because as I’ve mentioned before, movers charge by the pound.

We lost some major poundage today, but not by selling it. It became clear that the bed can’t go. Well, it could, but it would be highly impractical. Here’s what happened:

We have a water bed. Not one of those groovy velvet bags that sloshed their way through the Ford and Carter eras, but a waveless variety that had a ’shell’ that fit over a wood frame sitting on a platform and a plastic bag within the frame filled with many gallons of water. We got it 15 years or so ago from ‘Big John’s Beds’ in Cambridge shortly after moving into our present home. The ‘bag’ for the water is the original that came with the bed (never replaced, as often is the case) and is well beyond its projected life expectancy.

The bag was a pain to fill and even more of a pain to drain. In fact, when you drained it, the polyester (or some other polymer) fibers that negated the wave motion inevitably would get tangled up and we’d have to bring it into Big John’s shop to have someone unknot the gnarled ball they had become. So we thought: great, we’re due to get a new bag, and we’ll just get a brand new one, drain the old one on the morning we leave, and leave it on the curb, for the garbage men to pick up, and take a new bag, with 15 years of life now to go.

Wouldn’t you know, our bed’s manufacturer realized what a pain it was to move the bed (with the aforementioned knotting of it’s innards), and if it sprung a leak, the whole bag had to be replaced, etc. . So they stopped making them years ago and started making the bed out of a series of separately fillable tubes. OK, we thought, why not just replace the big old bag with the new tubes. No dice, Big John (or rather his helpful salesperson) said. The frame and shell for the new tube-style beds are completely different. We’d essentially have to buy a brand new bed. So we could buy the bed here, and pay for the shipping/moving of it, but it hardly makes sense. So, we are going to leave the bed here and buy a new one in Canada. We can’t even legally sell the old bed in Massachusetts because of health regulations. So our load just lighted considerably. No mattress, no bed, no bed frame. We’ll buy that when we get there. In fact, it does make some sense, because we’ll probably arrive and start setting up house at least a week and a half before our furniture reaches the Canadian border from Washington State. Every day that we can stay in the apartment and not in a hotel is money saved. So a new bed pays for itself in a fairly short amount of time.

Still, I loved that bed. Hope we can find one that is at least as nice.