The Little Old Lady Moving Company Is Out of Business

My sister and I are retiring from moving my son

I was an older mother when I had my son. The doctors called it a geriatric pregnancy. So encouraging.

My sister, Elaine, and I moved him into his nursery after his birth. What seemed like a few weeks later, we moved him into his college dorm.

She was there partly to drive me to and from his college town over two hours away. I was on xanax to get through the experience, so not able to drive. It was also his 18th birthday, and I had signed his cards “Love, Carol” instead of “Love, Mom”. I was not exactly myself.

We mounted his Megan Fox poster, made his bed — one the college had to replace because he is 6’5″, and standard college dorm beds are too short. We spread a rug on the floor, carried all his clothes and personal belongings — mostly electronics he couldn’t live without — into the dorm, and drove away, with me barely holding it together.

I had anticipated this day since he was born. I fell apart in the movie theater in Toy Story when the boy goes off to college, leaving his toys behind. My sister was prepared for me to sob after we dropped him off, and was surprised when I didn’t. I told her “One word. Xanax.”

Four years later, my sister and I moved him out of the apartment he lived in his last two years of college. She swore never to move him again, what with all the liquor bottles, old food in the fridge, dirty bathrooms, and collection of high heels on a shelf — only one of each pair. Don’t ask.

There have been a few moves since, but he has managed them mostly himself with the help of friends. Big guys who can move big things. Not little old ladies like me and his aunt.

Last week he moved to Los Angeles from Austin, Texas. The only real help he had was me and my sister. After this move, his aunt Elaine and I are retiring from the moving business. As I was already “geriatric” when he was born, we are both now entirely too old for the Millennial, or any, style of moving.

What is the Millennial style of moving you ask? If you have to ask, you clearly have no Millennials in your life. More specifically, you have no Millennial men in your life.

Millennial men move by throwing everything into as few boxes as possible, stuffing the rest willy-nilly into their car, selling what they can, and donating the rest, which often means leaving stuff on the curb.

My son first moved to Los Angeles when he was twenty-six, at the beginning of COVID. He packed everything he owned in his Toyota sedan and headed out. He’d been living with me, so all the furniture was mine and stayed with me, along with all his art and childhood memorabilia. It was a fairly easy move.

He bought bed, nightstand, desk and chair after he arrived. It being L.A. where everyone but movie moguls and stars have roommates, he moved several times, once leaving his T.V. on the curb, along with other furniture, as Millennial men in L.A. do. Another time, his erstwhile cocaine sniffing landlord kept his T.V. and computer monitor. He refused my offer to storm the place to get it back. Because he knew I would.

Fortunately, I was still in Texas during those moves, and couldn’t get arrested for breaking and entering to save his stuff, nor wrestle it into my car from the curb.

He moved back with me two years ago, as Millennials do.

I flew to L.A. and we drove his car back to Austin, the car once again stuffed to the gills, if cars had gills. Fortunately, he packed it before I arrived, so I didn’t need to help.

After two years with me, and after my move to Santa Fe, New Mexico, he is ready to be back to L.A. It’s a place you have to be ready for.

This time, I had a compelling reason to help him, because I had left furniture, photos, art, and memorabilia in the apartment we had shared. That doesn’t sound like a lot, other than furniture, but it is a lifetime of his artwork, school stuff, years of photographs, cards, toys and other memorabilia, and several paintings.

The plan was to sell all the furniture, and any kitchen ware he didn’t want to take with him. That left his clothes, electronics, work computers and monitors, bedding, basketballs, books and other miscellaneous.

Never mind that he had sixty days to pack his things after turning in his notice to end the lease. He also had four weeks before I arrived to help clear things out, including selling everything but his bed. He waited until I arrived.

Granted, during this time, he was finishing developing an App, a meditation/manifestation app named Vortex, which uses my AI voice for the affirmations and meditations. I definitely want to support that endeavor. He also works full-time for iHeart Media.

He did take time to do a goodbye brunch with his posse. The same posse who did not show up to help him move. Not that he asked them. They would have. They are all great guys.

Granted, we moved him during the work week, because he and I needed the bookend weekends to make the drives from and back to Santa Fe, and from Santa Fe to Los Angeles, without either of us missing work. We both work remotely. My sister took a couple of days off to help. Although, by help she didn’t actually mean do the packing and loading. She remembered the dorm moves in-and-out and had sworn Never Again.

Guess who wound up actually packing and loading? Never say never.

It’s actually good news that his friends all have day jobs, or night jobs and sleep during the day, so couldn’t help. Jobs are jobs in this economy, and these are all ambitious young men.

Also, we weren’t moving any furniture. That’s what I said to my sister when she realized we were going to have to help. How hard could it be, right?

Hard.

I underestimated how much I had left behind. Seriously, how many boxes of photos can one small family accumulate? Five boxes and one hulking plastic tub, to be exact.

I had to be pried away from going through each and every photograph and piece of memorabilia by the third day — the day my sister arrived. She did the prying.

At my rate it would take a year to move him out. My sister, always the organized, wiser one, told me to put the five, count them, five, boxes of photos in my car to go through when I got back home to Santa Fe. We did. They are sitting staring at me as I write.

My son underestimated how much he had accumulated in nearly three years. He has recording and photography equipment. Three monitors, two of which are for work and creating. The third is for gaming. What did you expect?

Add to that clothing, notebooks, basketballs, costumes for his TikTok and YouTube skits, and all his cat Lia’s stuff, etc.

For packing, he had a total of two, count them, two large boxes for us to pack everything in, so of course there were box runs.

With my sister orchestrating, both of us packing and all of us loading all three cars, we managed to get it done in three days. The furniture all sold last minute, we donated loads of things, with me actually driving them to Salvation Army and Goodwill. The apartment management frowns on leaving things on the curb.

We did leave a carpet cleaner in the breezeway that I bought used, and realized how much I needed it here after I returned. But there was not an inch of space left in any of our cars for it. I’m sure it went to a good home.

There was much shifting and reordering of things in the cars to enable us to see out of the back windshields. His cat, Lia, was given her prescribed gabapentin to keep her calm on the two day drive. This time, I was not medicated, but I managed to keep my cool anyway. I’ve had time to adjust to his being on his own over the years since college.

He and Lia are now happily in L.A., living the creator life and getting healthier in every way. California does that for him the way Santa Fe does for me.

Next move though, he’ll have to hire people. His geriatric mother and aunt are officially retired from the moving business. Better believe we’re leaving him stuff to clear out when we go.

For more of the adventures of Blake, Carol, and Elaine, click below.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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