The hardest thing I've come across in preparation for this
move has been deciding what to take and what to leave behind. When personal
effects are the only link to your treasured past, how do you let go of the
objects that define you?
Action figures, books, family photos, my childhood teeth
that my mom preserved in a Tic-Tac box, mementos of road trips taken across the
east coast, computer programs, DVD movies. Oh, and did I mention a mountain
full of clothes?
We started with over forty boxes of different shapes and
sizes. We went through every item to determine what we thought we really
needed. Junk, junk, junk, junk... gross! What is that nasty green goo coming
out of that box? After several weeks, we were able to condense the boxes down
to twenty two. Now we needed to figure out how to send all this stuff from New
York to Argentina.
We found a couple of potential places on the
internet. Everyone had a different price. If you send your boxes by freight,
the shipping charges are outrageous. Twenty two boxes on their own cost over
two thousand dollars. Some quotes even suggested seven thousand dollars. We
would have certainly understood the high costs if we were shipping tables,
couches, big screen TVs, or a car, but that wasn't the case.
Some of the shipping companies warned us that the actual
weight of the boxes wasn't as important as the volumetric weight. What is the
volumetric weight? It's basically a calculated weight based on how much
space your box will take on the freight ship, or cargo hold of a plane. So even
if you have a bunch of plush toys in a huge box weighing no more than twenty
pounds, the actual volumetric weight of the box may be 117 pounds.
Make no mistake about it! They will charge you according to
the volumetric weight even if you stuff your boxes with feathers. My advice is
that you fill every space in your box with as much of your things as possible.
Any empty space is just a waste of your own money.
We finally found a reputable and affordable shipping
company called XS Baggage. You can find them at http://xsbaggage.com/. Their rates were the
cheapest. Not $2,500 dollars or $5,000 dollars or $7,000 dollars. The shipping
rate went down to about $1,500. It's still over our budget, but a lot closer to
our target of $1,000 dollars. So now came the tough part.
We had no choice but to go through our things and pick out
the most important pieces of our past and throw away the rest. I was able to
condense my things from two and a half boxes down to one. I think the hardest
thing for me was having to scan my family pictures (which weighed too much) and
then shred the original photographs. A part of me felt like I had betrayed my
past by doing this, but what else could I do?
I had to leave a lot of my things behind and that was rough,
but not as rough as having to watch my partner (who still had eight boxes) go
through his things and decide what he had to leave behind. In many ways I felt
as if my life really began when I met him, so most of my personal effects are
just that, reflections of the past ten and a half years. My partner had a
lifetime in those boxes. Some of those items represented deceased family
members, or memories of a happier time. Watching him choose what not to bring
was physically painful to me.
I'm not sure if any of you can understand this,
but I've jumped through hoops for him. I taught him how to drive. I showed him
how to be independent. I helped him get his first job and open up a bank
account. I went to bat for him when our boss at Valencia Community College
unjustly terminated him, and almost got myself fired in the process. I fought
for his name and honor when some members of his own blood turned their backs on
him because he made a choice to better his future. I gladly took the hit for
anything that anyone threw at him. I moved to New York to ensure that he could
pursue his dream of attending college at The New School (an opportunity that
had been denied to him years before I met him). I was there for him when he
went through his Cancer scare. I'd die for him and I wouldn't even hesitate.
But this was something I was powerless to protect him from.
I couldn't choose what to take and what to keep
for him. It tore me apart, but I silently chose to step back and let him make
his own choices. He got through it despite a couple of rough moments. He
condensed his boxes down to two, and he managed to come out of this with a
smile.
Now we have a total of three boxes, which totaled a weight
of 170 lbs. Did we reach our goal of not spending more than a thousand to ship
these boxes? I have no freaking clue. The online quote calculator at XS Baggage
suggests that we've gone over by twenty nine dollars. I just hope there are no
hidden fees, but you know there will be. There always are.
We are exactly one week away from the big move
to Argentina. We can only hope that everything goes smoothly.
No comments:
Post a Comment