The 5 stages of moving (with kids)

I imagine there are worse things than moving with children. Being buried alive, contracting giardia, getting stuck in spinning class behind the person who ate onions and garlic for dinner last night--these are all worse than moving with children. Moving with children is a special blend of punishment, though, mixing chaos with emotions, pouring it over the ice of having to clean everything, and not being able to find the umbrella for your drink because someone probably packed it with the snorkeling gear. We are nearly at the end of our move, the second move we have made with children, and I have come to recognize that, mirroring the 5 stages of grief, there are

The 5 stages of moving:

1. The Nostalgic Stage You spend precious time gathering and then reflecting on the significance of each possession, thinking about the time you bought that grass skirt and coconut bra on your Hawaiian honeymoon. Nevermind that you will never again be the size you were on your honeymoon. This skirt/coconut ensemble is to be an heirloom, treasured by generations to come! It shall be folded and wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a hope chest, layered between memories and rainbows and lucky rabbit feet.

2. The Selling Stage You have set aside a pile of items you believe to be of great value, that will sell high on e-bay or at a premium on craigslist. You are overjoyed to be doing this because you will net so much money, which you will help defray your moving costs! You have staged each Laura Ashley bedspread in a romantic environment with soft lighting and are just waiting for that big offer to come through!

3. The Minimalist Stage You are relishing this newfound simplicity as you prepare for this move. You find it so refreshing to live minimally, with the majority of your belongings now packed away and neatly marked with the name of the room into which they will be unloaded in your new domicile. You are feeling so much lighter! You are practically Thoreau!

4. The Resistance Stage Your children are starting to resent all their toys being packed away. All of craigslist is flaking out on you, and Laura Ashley didn't even get one bid on e-bay!? The more boxes you pack, the more your yet-to-be-packed stuff seems to multiply. You are starting to lose memory of what has been packed and what you haven't packed and what you actually own or what you gave away through craigslist. You do random headcounts throughout the day just to make sure your children who had taken to playing in boxes aren't actually sealed in.

5. The 'I don't give a flying UHaul' stage You are freaking out. It seems Oriental Trading has exploded in every drawer, with useless trash made in China standing in the way of your move. You have taken to just throwing random crap into any box, bag, or Barbie dreamhouse that will contain it. You are convinced your sanity is buried somewhere deep, within the Christmas decorations, perhaps? Or was it with the coconut bra? Your spouse says, We are not moving the crazy with us, so you throw everything away, vowing to recycle for the rest of your life to reduce the huge carbon footprint you have just made on the way to the landfill. In the end, you move. And there you are, in a new place with all your old stuff. Join us next time for "the 5 stages of moving in." Right now, we're still on stage 1: denial.

Freakodontics

As if sixth grade were not awkward enough, I spent mine as an orthodontic freak show. I was eleven years-old when I went under the knife for an impacted incisor tooth. Basically, one of my eye teeth was trying to shoot through the roof of my mouth. The oral surgeon exposed the tooth (ouch), attached a bracket to the exposed tooth (mommy!) and tied the bracket to the wire of my braces (ouch to your mother!).

Yeah, I was into heavy metal in the 6th grade.

It was very Looney Toons dentist with a string pulled taut between two teeth. The goal was to drag the one tooth into place, but I kept waiting for the string to break and some dental work to go flying.

The string that was supposedly guiding my tooth into place was knotted off in a big heap. It resembled a soggy piece of popcorn. I’d be giving my oral presentation on cumulus clouds at the front of the classroom and watch as the furrowed brows of my classmates tried to tell me: Kendra, you have a piece of--

I know. A piece of popcorn stuck in my braces.

The process of relocating my rogue tooth took three months, which translates to a biblical eternity of stale popcorn smiles in the social minefield that is sixth grade.

The good news is that it worked. The even better news is that I get to regale every dental professional with my history of freakodontics.

The Stanton children were an orthodontic powerhouse. I also rocked the mushroom cut long after the age it was okay to do so.

***

When I was 22, I went to a dentist whose office was near the community center where I worked in Boston. While the dental hygienist scraped and picked, I noticed a list on the office wall. The list included the names of all the patients who would be seen by the dentist that day, and next to the names were the patients’ phone numbers.

I considered the at-risk youth that I would be working with that afternoon, whom I saw every day but whom I made sure never got a hold of my phone number.

When the dentist entered, I asked him about the policy of placing patient names with contact information in such a public place. He said it convenienced the staff, having all the information so handy. But couldn’t the list be placed where no patient could read it? I asked.

I watched as the dentist took a ballpoint pen and crossed off my name and phone number. “That all right?” he asked. “No one can read it now.”

Feeling violated, I called the HIPAA hotline to see if I might have a case against this dentist for what seemed to me a sloppy management of personal information. The hotline attendant said my case was weak, especially as the list had been posted in a room with a limited viewership. It wasn’t as if the whole waiting room was privy to our digits.

I staged a silent protest of the dentist’s policies, like spitting into the wind. I never went to see him again.

***

Within four minutes of being seated in the chair at my dentist's office in the south, the dental hygienist, whom I had only just met that day, asked me about my plans to add more children into my life. She scraped and picked and gave me the sucking implement for when it was time to spit.

My mouth ajar, the only reflex I could control was my urge to spit. This is, as I have learned since sixth grade, sometimes all any of us can control.

Until we open our mouths, we can conceal so much. Our fears about invasion of privacy. Our feelings about having a(nother) baby. Our pieces of stale popcorn, real or facsimile, wedged conspicuously between our braces.

They told me to put my chin down because my glasses were causing a glare here. I thought it was my pearly white teeth!

My relationships with dental professionals have been numerous and frequent. In many ways, I can thank them for exposing not only my teeth, but my deeply-lodged fears and anxieties.

But I also find that our fears and chagrins have a way of fighting their way out. Every sixth grader eventually finds reason to speak. Just as every dental patient will eventually find reason to cry, “ouch” or “stop.” When the moment of truth finally arrives, we cannot reverse history. The laws of motion seem to make no exemption for spit.

It doesn’t take an oral surgeon to expose our most hidden deposits. Sometimes all any of us has to do is open up and say, “Ah.”

Here's the dentist - dr-averbuch.co.il.

Virgin Campout

We took our maiden voyage as a family into the great wilderness of the Chilhowee campground with our churchies. Times in a tent were had. Most of them were exhausting. Loverpants spent most of the time feeling under the weather and packing and cooking food over a Charlie Brown -esque stovetop. I spent most of the time telling Little Man to stop showing the other campground inhabitants the full moon before dark (oy). Baby Girl spent most of the time having an absolute ball, and her infectious sense of adventure and frivolity made it all feel so worth the effort. I don't know why it took us six years to camp as a family, but I'm so glad we finally did. Seeing my kids in a whole new environment, outside the comforts of PBSKids on Demand, a pantry full of snacks, and fluffy beds was revealing. I learned a lot. Like how my children have evolved to not need me so much. They can explore and return; they can make new friends and come back to me for snuggles. The helicopter propellers will still spin phdumb phdumb phdumb but the aircraft doesn't have to hover so close. It felt good to be able to sit and read a book. It felt better to still look around and see my favorite 3 people all under one nylon canopy, asleep against the din of a whippoorwill during mating season. I am so tired from the weekend and I can't wait until the next time we get to sleep under the stars. I'm pretty sure we can count on a full moon either way.

***

On the way to the campground, Baby Girl went reeling out to the car with a huge backpack.

Loverpants: What's in there? Baby Girl: You'll find out! Loverpants: I don't want to find out!

We later found out. No one else had packed pillows but the stuffed pig had his own. No Girl Scout badges were earned for that one.