You Move, Stuff Breaks

(Written in early October 2008)

One of the unfortunate costs of the move abroad is the inevitable cacophony of a dozen maracas when you pick up a box of precious possessions you have chosen to ship through the mail ahead of you and realize that something inside is now destroyed. This is a consequence I have gotten used to, and to this day, about half my wall hangings are sans glass, though I have vowed many times to go to the hardware store and replace them, damn it.

There’s really no way to avoid it, and I have found it doesn’t seem to matter whether you roll your item in 12 yards of robust bubble tape, stamp “FRAGILE!” all over the box like chicken pox, or send it air mail with insurance. Sometimes it breaks, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes one small frame in a box of many will be the only one to smash, while another box will have so much damage it’ll sound like a box of glass confetti. At times a box will arrive as crisp and firm as the day you shipped it, other times it arrives as if a heavyweight boxer has been using it as his personal punching bag, battered and ripped in places. I’ve had a giant, heavy painting with glass, ship by boat (3 months travel time) from Thailand to the U.S. and arrive unscathed. And yet, when shipped from the U.S. to New Zealand, AIR MAIL no less, it arrived with the glass busted into a million dramatic shards. Guess one’s status as a “third world” country doesn’t have anything to do with its ability to ship with dignity.

And sometimes, you’re just stupid, as a couple days ago when I flamboyantly yanked a down comforter from a box I was unpacking only to see one of only 2 remaining CRYSTAL champagne goblets I own fly into a graceful arc and crash onto the floor in a shower of unglueable pieces. *sigh*

A slew of breakages that I have found hard to swallow this time around are my holiday decorations. In Montana, I had entered my now-I-will-start-buying-really-nice-things-of-quality-that-I-will-keep-forever phase, thinking Montana the final stop on my lifetime gypsy tour, *sigh.* I had started to slowly acquire pieces for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even Easter to display around the house – a trend I was never much into before. The University of Montana bookstore, obviously sensing this new shopping lust, obliged me in stocking fun, funky and beautiful things like whimsical, fat-bottomed characters for all holidays from Seasons of Cannon Falls, and cute little statues from Giftcraft, Inc. I seem to have a thing for little statues to put up everywhere, like silly reindeer or big fat rabbits. I love them, and if able, would have bought the lot every time. But, after patiently (ha ha) waiting for the bookstore’s 40% off sales just days before and after the actual holiday, I would start to buy up a few of these pieces. They weren’t cheap full price, but hey, it’s hard not to justify 40% off, right? I was almost giddy placing them carefully around the house, and they were top candidates in the very short list of what was being shipped with us to New Zealand.

Well, most of these holiday pieces are ceramic, and so, seem to have taken a specific delight in smashing into a cloud of terra cotta dust when shipped. Heartbreaking. At first, I pushed aside these small, clinky bags for the trash. But for some reason, I couldn’t quite throw them out entirely. The worst was a small set of witches – a mother and daughter which were shaped into an exaggerated angle leaning into each other. The mother – untouched, the daughter – puzzle pieces. And gruesomely, the mother stood with the daughter’s now disembodied head dangling from her curly hair. At first (after removing her daughter's head), I just placed the mother on the windowsill since it’s her time to shine pre-Halloween anyway, but her solitary S-shape seemed so odd, so sad, that I decided to get some super glue and give the daughter a go.

Well, it’s quite clear I would not make much of a surgeon, but damn, trying to glue the witch daughter, a giant “chocolate” bunny, and my large and beautiful Santa turned out to be a comical event. Did I get them together? Hrm, yes. But it seems being even a millimeter off when gluing one piece to another results in the entire piece coming out rather Dali-esque. During each painstaking process, I whispered to each one that as soon as I began buying up oil paints again (since I had to ditch my previous ones for the move, *sniff sniff*), that I would paint in these giant cracks and fissures and chips and no one would ever know the difference.

Hrm.

Well, I’m not sure how much dignity each piece now holds on to, but I did get quite a big of sentimental satisfaction in reuniting the witch daughter, now with head and body attached, to the scoliosis curve of her mother. See for yourself.

POSTSCRIPT

Well, I would have let you see for yourself, but the daughter witch isn’t with us anymore. I found a picture of a somewhat similar witch to the duo I had to the right. Anyway, the departure of the daughter came about like this:

Setting: J. has just laid down for a nap in the bedroom. Beau is in the living room, most likely playing Civ IV: Beyond the Sword.

*THUMP*
J: “What was that?”
Beau: *long silence* “Nothing.”
J: *slightly more alarmed voice* “What was that?”
Beau: … “Nothing.”
J: “Beau….”
Beau: “I don’t know, but it wasn’t your itty bitty witch!”

*sigh* Goodbye, itty bitty witch.