by Tom Pantera
Columnist

There are very few experiences in life as unpleasant as moving.

As this is being written, Karon and I are on the downslope of preparing for our move to Oklahoma. We’re probably about three quarters of the way to being fully packed (I’m being optimistic). We’re in a sort of weird limbo right now; we’re waiting for the current owners of our new house to finalize the purchase of their new one. Once that domino falls into place, we’ll have a better idea of the schedule.

About the only bright spot in our packing picture is that there are many boxes we didn’t unpack when we moved into our current apartment a year and a half ago. We knew it was probably going to be a temporary thing, so we pretty much unpacked things as we needed them.

Packing is still a huge pain, though. I sort of liken it to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief. But whereas she had denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, when you move you have excitement, procrastination, dreaming about being organized, swathing stuff in bubble wrap and, finally, throwing crap into boxes, taping them shut and labeling them “whatever.” It’s not a great system, but it’s a system.

Karon has a lot of stuff she’s going to get rid of, the standard old clothing that she’s been carting around for years, that kind of thing. I’m actually somewhat lucky in that regard. When I moved to Missouri in December 2010, because I had to move all of my possessions in one car I did a major life cleaning. I had tons of books alone, in addition to the normal detritus of life, and I managed to get rid of an incredible amount of stuff. Of course, every so often I’ll think of something I wish I’d have kept, but I pretty much kept all the important stuff and jettisoned the rest.

That was really a fascinating experience, though. It was like a personal archaeological dig. I remember getting toward the bottom of the storage garage and discovering layer after layer of things I had long ago forgotten I had. That raised the question of why in hell I kept them in the first place. I’ve always been a bit of a pack rat – I have firmly warned Karon that if my brain ever goes off the rails, it’ll come out as a propensity for hoarding – but it was a lesson learned.

And it was tremendously liberating. That’s the only word to describe it. I was in the process of reinventing myself and part of that was to shuck the old parts and objects that I simply couldn’t carry with me to the new place. God, it has been said, gave us memories so we could have roses in winter. I tried to hold on to a lot of those roses, but when I visited them the last time they had dried and wilted, and many of them had lost all but a few enfeebled petals. There was simply no reason to keep a lot of the stuff.

And when it was all said and done, and the car was packed and I left a place I’d lived nearly half my life, the possibilities were spread out before me. It’s like when you’re driving west on I94; you come over that rise about two-thirds of the way through North Dakota and suddenly you can see the badlands in all their majesty.

It was also fun, although a little discombobulating, to move to a place where nobody knew me. One of the weirdest experiences came in the first day or two. Because I’d lived in Fargo-Moorhead for so long, and had a pretty high-profile job, it was rare for me to walk into anywhere and not know at least one person. But the first couple of days I was in Columbia, I would walk into Starbucks and realize that not a single person there knew my name, much less anything else about me. It took a little getting used to. A tiny part of it was loneliness, but by far the greater portion was a sense of possibility.

So now, I prepare to do that again. The big difference, of course, is that this time I won’t be alone. Karon will be with me. But that only means we’ll experience that weird sense of temporary anonymity and dislocation together. We’ll have each other to bounce impressions off of. It’s still going to be weird, though, especially since we’re moving to a small town of about 6,000 where a lot of folks already know each other.

Still, that’s a huge part of the thrill of our new adventure. I am keenly aware that for the second time in a couple of years I have a chance to reinvent myself, or at least to reinvent my place in the world. I’m not going to change much personally – hell, I’m old enough that I’m not sure that’s even possible – but I’m also old enough to know what I can get away with and what would be simply stupid. I’ll probably still do the odd stupid thing, but at least I’ll think about it first.

And that reinvention is an incredible privilege. I knew going in that I was taking a chance few my age could, but I also had an opportunity few my age ever have. I’d had a good life up to that point, but I was ready for a change. It was a huge gamble, but it paid off in spades.

So I’d better go box up some things. I just keep telling myself it’ll all be worth it in the end and it will. But I’m rapidly approaching the throwing-things-in-boxes stage. No matter how much your life changes, some things remain the same.