Moving Day
We’re moving, that is my daughter, the dog, and me. Tahlia and I FaceTime so much that we are surprised to see each other’s legs when we do see each other in person. The website and club will be fine with hardly a whisper of change. But my physical move from Los Angeles to Cleveland, Ohio is in 42, nope, 41 days. Diana and I are packing the good dishes and the stuff we live with – like the books and immense array of bandages that are popping up on shelves and in drawers (well they were on sale or we needed a certain size, etc.). It takes a lot of visits to Public Storage to acquire the cartons and tape because we simply don’t estimate the enormity of a life spent with closing the closet doors on “stuff.”
I’m all for this new adventure. I’ve never lived in Ohio. My family started moving around when I was in fifth grade. You can’t count moving from Manhattan to West Englewood, New Jersey when I was three. It was just a drive over the bridge. But when I was in fifth grade we moved to Macon, Georgia, then back to New Jersey for a short while, off to Ashland, Alabama for my sixth grade, then New Orleans, Charleston, South Carolina, New York City, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for the remainder of my seventh grade and eighth grade, Old Bridge, New Jersey for some of high school, and Asheville, North Carolina to finish off secondary school. How we skipped Ohio is a mystery but now I get to celebrate my eightieth in a new state.
Here’s what the hardest part of packing for me is, at least right now. I have to get rid of my magazines. I am such a magazine lover. Not that long ago there was a newsstand with all sorts of magazines on the corner of Beverly Glen and Santa Monica, but it’s gone the way of many newsstands. The thing was that I could get a magazine without a subscription, There were so many photos and interesting articles in each one that it was as if one were visiting a museum. I didn’t even have to read the language to enjoy the photographs. Well…I saved my favorites. Now I have to pick and choose (mostly throw out) and it’s lots of sad goodbyes. Oh dear. How I’ve loved them. Memories now.
Of course Diana has her soft spots also. In about an hour the tow truck is coming for her old Toyota. How she loved that car. It actually won’t even turn on now. We’ve used it as if it were a storage pod! Nonetheless, this was the car that took her all over California for depositions and trials in the most peculiar places. She took photos of it to stick in a scrapbook.
We had our neighbors over for a Friday night “goodbye” this past Friday. It was a bit earlier than we had planned, but David has a 3 month gig in NYC with the NYTimes to redesign their T Magazine and left this past Sunday. He’s amazingly talented. I can’t wait to see what he creates (around June, I think, will be his first T Magazine). We’ll keep up however since we play Crossplay.
All told I feel very excited. I wonder if I should write to Taylor Swift and let her know that we’ll be neighbors!
Don’t forget that our meeting is November 22nd, on Zoom, at 2:00 pm Pacific. I can’t wait to see you. We’re reading Murder Uncorked by Maddie Day.
Karin Diskin