Packing

Me and Pi starting to pack

Many of you have asked me how one packs for a year.  I’ll be frank:  I don’t know.  On one hand, as Dave says, we’re moving to the country that makes our clothes.  Check your labels.  Pakistan and Guatemala are up there, but China beats them all.  On the other hand, I don’t want to buy new clothes.  As I start to pull apart my closet and put clothes into piles – yes, no, maybe – I realize that I like my clothes.  They’re me.  I feel as though somehow my confidence and history and sense of self is woven into the cotton fabric of some of the oldies.  The me-ness is as real as the seamstress who  cut the fabric and stitched the cloth in a cement factory, halfway around the world.  I wore that blue shirt when I interviewed for a job.  I always wore those pants under graduation robes.   That sweater is perfect for the airplane.

Mary Morris, a professor at Sarah Lawrence, who happens to write a lot about travel, calls excess baggage a symptom of an inner vacuum:  "Excess baggage is a symptom of something we are missing on the inside -- a fear that we won't be accepted for what we are, as if our selves are not enough."  How true.

I can’t tell you how many times in the past trips I’ve packed clothes that I didn't  wear.  That lime green sweater that makes me look like a dolphin? Sure, I’ll bring it along.  I might wear it on the beach and use it to call my finny friends.    The dress with too many large flowers?  Nothing says the tropics like big ugly flowers.  I’ve never worn it before, but maybe this time.  Yes, indeed, over-packing is a symptom. The fear of not measuring up is also a real disease.

When I first started thinking about packing for the year, I felt disciplined.  One black skirt, one black pair of pants, one pair of jeans and 10 tops.  But what if it is cold?  10 tops and 5 sweaters.  But what if the other teachers dress up to teach?  Black dress and skirt with scarfs to dress up the outfit. Snowy?  Boots and a sweater.  Hot?  t-shirts... and the discipline breaks and the disease invades the body.

There is a gender thing going on here too, which I'm trying to ignore.  Dave will bring 3 pairs of pants and 7 button-down cotton shirts.  He does that when we go on a trip for a week or a trip for a month  The shirts are easy to wash.  The button-down shirts can say casual or dressy, depending upon tie or no.   For me, when you throw dresses and skirts and scarfs and dressy pants and casual pants and different pairs of shoes, the virus invades the soul and the disease  spreads.

Morris continues:  "We bring too much of past experience, the clutter of our emotions.  These things get in the way and keep us from getting close to others.  Then we re left with the task of having to find someone else to carry it, whether it is the luggage or our loneliness."    Ahh.  So true!  I’ve never returned from a trip and  -- after lugging my suitcase around the world -- wished that I brought more. I type out the quote and put it in my suitcase as well.

It fits!

No -- just kidding.   I’ll take everything out of the suitcase again and try to take out half so that I have room for new emotions.  Tomorrow.

Rejected  clothes