all will be well….

by bam


written on an itty-bitty screen…

i whispered the words over and over, linguistic rosary beads, carrying me, i hoped, to the land of calm. 

all will be well….

the moving truck was three days late getting here, with a good dozen phone inquiries left unanswered. day after day, promises crumbled, as we did our best to wait it out in the empty law school apartment, stitching in walks and slices of new haven pizza. 

finally, wednesday morning, we caught sight of the squat little van veering for the curb out front. we waved, as if greeting a long-lost cousin who’d just crossed the seas. 

and then the driver loped out from the cab, a man on a mission we didn’t yet understand.

“who’s in charge here?” he barked. i pointed to my firstborn, the kid whose worldly belongings were stashed inside that moving vault. or so we hoped.

“your bed’s cracked in half, and your desk, too,” he informed. 

we stood motionless, taking it in. these sorts of words seem to take the slow road to absorption, words you’d never expected.

somewhere deep inside i thought, “well, at least they’re here,” seeing as i had visions of that vault of worldly possessions taking a jaunt aimlessly around the globe. in perpetuity.

then they started to unload. first off: book cases. or rather the remains thereof. shards of bookcase, more like it. 

then the antique floor lamp. its black metal post with the golden finial, snapped off, never to be seen again.

dear moving man assured us it was all that way when he’d picked up the load not too far away, earlier that morning. bad packing, he explained. really bad packing. seems whoever packed the load defied all laws of physics. maybe it was a science experiment. in case the packer is out there somewhere, here’s what he should write in his lab report: it didn’t work. heavy objects crush lighter ones every time….

as if all that wasn’t quite enough, last night we got the introductory tour of the yale-new haven medical center ER when we ambled over with a soon-to-be legal scholar who, after trying to move a coffee table out of the movers’ way, found himself unable to walk. or sit. or roll.

he’s home now, sleeping right beside the spot on the floor where i’m curled up tapping on a screen. we raced to the five-minutes-away IKEA and scooped up a replacement desk and two bookshelves (silver lining, the bed turned out not to be cracked in half, so that stoppage of my heart was in vain. hallelujah).

so, all in all, all will be well. 

soon as i ditch the fever that’s been haunting me all week….

hoping your week has been infinitely more glorious. and so grateful that today i’ll be sliding hundreds of books onto shelves….

what are the words you whisper when you discover yourself wedged in a tight spot?

photo above: view out the apartment window at dawn, as I whispered my morning’s meditation….