Everything in its Right Place

On shedding layers

Photo by Phil on Unsplash

Sometimes, when I find myself walking past one of the many addresses I have lived at, I stop and gaze at my ex windows. And imagine many-years-ago-me standing there and looking out at present-day-me. As if the two scenes, separated by so many years, overlap and are both visible to me at once. As if they were two parallel realities, each unfolding in its own time. And I’m not watching these two scenes as a spectator, from an external standpoint. I’m former-me and present-day-me at the same time -- my consciousness is in both. So I’m both the guy looking out the window and wondering who that gentleman standing on the sidewalk and staring back at me might be, and the gentleman on the sidewalk who knows exactly who the guy standing in the window and looking out is. 

For some reason, this makes me nostalgic, melancholic. My mind goes back to when I lived there, behind those windows. It goes back to what I did, who I was with, the things I had around me. I picture myself in those rooms, following the routine I had, thinking the thoughts that prevailed, being happy or sad about the things that made me happy or sad. It’s funny how, in retrospect, even the toughest struggles, the most difficult times, become cherished memories. The past is always good, the future always scary, the present hard. Maybe because we learned and emerged stronger and more self-confident and aware that, should it happen again, we know what to do. And so we’re fond of those memories anyways. 

I used to envy those who lived in the same house, in the same city and country, their entire life. It evoked things I felt I didn’t have, like stability and planning ability and clarity of purpose. It made me think of a center of gravity, somewhere to return to, a refuge. A place to gather a big family, one day. Where you can find all the things you ever owned. Everything in its right place, forever. I used to go to school and be best friends with a guy who lived in the same house where his parents grew up, and his grandparents, and great grandparents. I’d go to his place to do homework together and sometimes he’d show me stuff that belonged to people who lived three or four generations prior. And what always amazed me was that he’d find these things exactly where they’d been kept for, say, a hundred and fifty years. Right there, in their right place. Not a hint of dust piled on them.      

When we were little, we moved a bunch of times. The house they took me to when I was born was where Dad’s family lived, and where Mom moved in with him once they got married. It was Italy in the mid-sixties, so I guess it wasn’t unusual to see large, extended families live all together under the same roof. In our case, that house contained Grandpa Silvio, Grandma Erminia, Uncles Guido and Franco, Aunts Maria, Jolanda, and Giuseppina, Mom, Dad, and me. Uncle Pietro, the eldest of Dad’s siblings, was the only one not living there. Then came my sister. Then my little brother. And when Uncle Guido got married to Aunt Luisa, she too moved in with all of us. If you’re familiar with the Italian movie “La Famiglia” directed by Ettore Scola in the late eighties -- which I’m sure you’re not -- I’d say that our big, classic Italian family living in that house at the time resembled a lot the one in the movie. La Famiglia is a dramatic comedy about the inner dynamics, conflicts, and relationships of a large, middle-class Italian family spanning three generations. There’s some humor too. A nice movie that I’ve always remembered, because I’ve always seen our family in it.

When I was four, and Dad could afford it, we moved to a place of our own. After a couple of years, he got a job near Rome, and we all moved there. Only to move back to our hometown a year later, when Dad started his own company. After that, we moved three more times. Then, when I was nineteen, I moved out to go to college, and since then I’ve moved twelve more times. Thirteen moves in thirty-nine years. On average, one every three years. Is it normal? I’ve always thought it is, having grown up in a family that moved so often. But at the same time I’ve always suffered the instability, the precariousness, the lack of an anchor -- not being able to accumulate my life all in one place, where memories are indissolubly tied to physical things. A place where superfluousness doesn’t exist, where everything is indispensable. Where memories are lazy and need stuff in order to exist.

All my moves happened for a reason, they weren’t whimsical. I moved because I could afford a better place, or because I changed cities, or countries, or because I broke up with someone, or started a family, or separated. And every time it felt like making a fresh start. I’d plan the move, and that was the occasion to sift through all my stuff, to decide what I needed and what I didn’t, to reflect on what the next chapter of my life was going to look like. A sort of general review of my possessions, my things, my physical world. And inevitably I’d put a lot of stuff in storage. Who knows, I might need this one day, I’d think. Stuff that I didn’t want to part with, that I wasn’t ready to part with, maybe. Stuff I was still attached to. Emotionally, sentimentally.

But move after move, I realized that the things I put in storage piled up without me even going to check on them every now and then, without maintaining the importance I originally thought they’d continue to have. I realized that I wouldn’t need them, ever. And move after move, the things I decided to keep were fewer and fewer. But more important. 

I used to envy those who lived their whole life in the same place, where things have never been put through a move-induced selection process, never been thrown away. And I admit these people and places still exert a certain fascination to me. But if there’s one thing moving so many times taught me is that life is about eliminating, not accumulating. And that when we eliminate, we liberate. We lift burdens. Become lighter. Memories, emotions, sentiments -- they don’t need stuff.

There’s a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver that gives a voice to all this. It’s called Storage. So simple and elegant. “As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important. So one day I undid the lock [of the storage space] and called the trash man. He took everything. I felt like the little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing -- the reason they can fly”, part of it goes.

Today, I could probably move with just a small suitcase of clothes, a guitar, and all my books. Nothing else. Not because these are the only important things in my life, but because these are the only important material things in my life. The rest is immaterial, invisible. And after shedding a layer of possessions with every move, this invisible portion has grown larger. And more important.

Maybe I’ll move one more time, or a few more times, who knows. Or maybe life’s done with revealing what’s truly important to me. And I won’t move at all.

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