Packing Is Worst Part Of Moving

I have used two weeks of my vacation time this year helping various mothers move into new apartments.

I say this not in a veiled attempt to earn your sympathy, but in a cheap, blatant ploy to win your pity.

First, I went down to Colorado two months ago and helped my mother move from her home of 30 years into a one-bedroom apartment. Then, just this week, I helped my mother-in-law move from an apartment on the South Hill into The Academy Retirement Community near Mission Park.

We are all recovering nicely. Thanks for asking.

Of course, it was far more traumatic for them than it was for me. I salute both of these women for their courage and flexibility. They were the ones who had to uproot themselves and embark on entirely different ways of life.

Yeah, but I’m the one who had to unload their refrigerators.

My mother, God bless her, is not a pack-rat in any way, except when it comes to her refrigerator. You have never seen a refrigerator stacked so high with salad dressing, pecan clusters and pickles. I figured maybe she was on that new pickle-chocolate-Roquefort diet.

“Here’s some Thousand Island dating back to the Roosevelt administration,” I told my mom.

“Oh, stop exaggerating,” she said.

“I don’t mean Franklin,” I said. “I mean Teddy.”

For me, the entire mother-moving experience can be summed up in two words: barbecue sauce. As I was taking things out of her refrigerator, a pattern began to emerge. Eggs, barbecue sauce, chocolate syrup, barbecue sauce, Christmas fruitcake, barbecue sauce. You get the picture.

So I made a little pyramid of barbecue sauce bottles there on the counter, just to take inventory. I ended up with seven bottles, four of which were Kraft Hickory Smoked Barbecue Sauce. From this, I deduced that my mother really loves barbecue sauce, but she is particularly crazy-nuts for Kraft Hickory Smoked Barbecue Sauce, vintage 1980s.

So I consolidated several of the Kraft collection into one bottle and threw the rest away, thus reducing the total barbecue sauce tonnage in her new refrigerator by half.

Now, my mother-in-law, Frances, doesn’t have this barbecue sauce problem. Her passion seems to be tuna fish, judging from her cupboards.

“Here’s another one,” I’d say as I pulled another can of tuna fish from a corner of a cupboard. “That puts us into double digits.”

I even found a three-pack of tuna fish in there. I had no idea they even made three-packs of tuna. We carted all of this tuna fish over to her new place, so all I can say to the residents of The Academy is - come on over to Frances’ apartment! All the tuna fish you can eat, on Frances! (Boy, is she going to hate me for this.)

As I look back, this entire mother-moving experience melts into one long blur of me saying, “You’re going to keep this? Mom, it’s a stick, for crying out loud.”

Other disjointed images come to mind: boxes stacked five high in the shower; 50 hangers springing out onto the pavement when I open my car trunk; searching vainly through 18 different boxes looking for a remote control; sitting around on boxes, eating Bellybusters from Zip’s.

Yes, it has been an epic struggle. Yet, I have only done my duty as a son, or, as I felt in my more martyrlike moments, an ordained saint.

Actually, I feel like I was an extremely poor son most of the time. My patience disappeared before the first roll of sealing tape ran out.

The low point came when I spent 90 minutes attempting to hook up my mother’s TV to cable while she looked on offering helpful advice such as, “Make sure it’s plugged in or it won’t work.”

Nothing worked. Then I spent an hour trying to find the box with the phone book in it so I could call the cable company. Then I spent 30 minutes on hold to the cable company. Then I finally got a service representative, who told me we needed to make an appointment to get hooked up. Then I put my hand over the receiver and asked my mom when she would like the appointment.

“Oh, I’ve already got an appointment,” she said. “The cable man’s coming Friday.”

“Mom,” I said, trying not to weep. “Why didn’t you tell me two hours ago that you already had an appointment to hook up the cable?”

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were doing some other little thing there.”

The whole week went pretty much like that. Yet in the end, we got everyone moved and I gained enormous amounts of valuable experience, which I will need in about three months.

My mom is moving out of her apartment in February and into a condo. I guess I’ll be there, unless I can change my identity and escape to another country where nobody will ever find me.

Forget it. I can’t stomach the thought of moving.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review