Moving Sawyer

July 29, 2019

Greetings from the drayage,

The Alden Towers apartments were built in the twenties, classic architecture for the time, eight stories of brick and limestone, edged with just enough flair that you know when it was built.  It is a dramatic presence on the edge of the Detroit River, home to nearly four hundred doors to someone’s life.

The inside is a warren of hallways and lobbies, lined with marble and heavy wood molding.  Arched doorways, carved plaster walls, the floors are terrazzo and marble and wood.  There are ghosts of women in floor length dresses, men in tuxedoes, the Grand Lobby filled with people waiting for the cab to take them out for the night. 

I have moved my children a lot.  It’s never convenient, usually chaotic and stressful, and yet a secret part of me enjoys it.  I’ve moved Sawyer in and out of his college apartments countless times, and now, in and out of Alden Towers. 

We rented a van which, based on our history and some totally wild guessing we thought his possessions would fit within.  Sometimes wild guessing is good enough.  As I stood in Sawyer’s apartment, looking at his things piled haphazardly in the living room, I doubted wild guessing was good enough this time.

“It’ll fit.” Sawyer said.  Some people might hear this and think he is being cavalier, or naive, but it is a blend of optimism and something else.  I watched him as he said it, this confidence sort of draped over him like a matador’s cape.  He had no logical reason to think it would fit, or that we would ever be able to even get it all out of his apartment and down the four stories into the basement garage.  It’s just who he is.

The freight elevator was twenty steps down the hall, an opening so narrow you would mistake it for a closet. ‘Freight elevator’ was a silly name: it was too small for a wing back chair, or a mattress We would wait for it to appear in the little diamond window, see it slide slightly past our floor, then stop and begrudgingly adjust and the door would open with an unearthly sound.

The inside of the elevator was a claustrophobic’s nightmare.  It was hot, like someone left the elevator out in the sun all day and then sent it down this shaft to torture us.  The metal walls were marred from ages of other passengers and thick layers of paint blocked the air vents.  The floor tiles were heaved and cracked; one light bulb was missing. 

Again and again we crammed ourselves into the elevator, laughing each time, both of us already sweating, hauling boxes or bags or furniture.  There was one mechanical pause when the silence fell on us, and we both waited for the elevator to move, wondering if this would be where we would spend our last day.

I was laughing at the buttons on the elevator panel.  One switch was missing, between labels that said ‘Run’ and ‘Stop’.  Sawyer said: “That is for when you see the monster.”

The elevator door groaned when it closed.  Whatever safety device is supposed to keep it from crushing pokey passengers has long since lost its sharpness.  If we were a step too slow it would just clamp onto whatever we were moving, hold it for a second or two and then sigh and reluctantly release.

“I think it just waits for us to get in the doorway and then tries to close on us. Otherwise, it’s like, ‘Well, whatever’.” Sawyer said.

When we couldn’t fit in the freight elevator, we followed a maze of uneven steps and halls that eventually took us to the same deserted service hole in the bowels of the building.  The ceiling drooped low and huge flaking pipes hung down to knock the bark off unwary movers.

In the basement garage the van slowly filled.  “It’s a work of art.” Sawyer said, as we nested his belongings inside.  He looked at me, reading the doubt on me.  “It’ll fit.”

I admired my son’s possessions.  There were some things I knew he cared about because I had moved them many times.  This sign, the stereo and speakers he inherited from my first apartment, these books, this leather jacket, a small collection of records.  The rest I know he would be comfortable leaving in the basement of the Alden Towers.  But he said: “It’ll fit.”

If someone asked me what the best part of my day was, I would tell them it was the last trip down in the freight elevator, clutching my son’s flotsam, still laughing at the Monster button. Seeing him leaning against the hot wall, smiling, unafraid of monsters or moving or mountains or whatever is on his horizon.    

This other thing, the thing that shapes his matador courage, the strength he shares with his brothers and sister, is the knowing.  They know that whatever comes, whether stalled elevator or broken heart or broken collarbone, lost job or cancelled flight, they will adapt, they will see the possibility, and they will take the best they can find in their lives.  Wherever they move.

As we drove home to unload his things, at least for a few weeks before we move him again, I thought of the first move, that moment when we drove away leaving our son in a lonely apartment wondering if would be ok.  Laughing now, as I write these words.  An hour later he was running the streets of Detroit with new friends, a gazelle among concrete, exploring the city he would call home for six years.

The secret part of me that enjoys moving my children is the part that feels they still need me.  I know it’s less and less true, and I am glad of it.  But while I can, and when they want, I will lift the boxes and slide the furniture and sweat and think with them, and then stand back and be amazed and happy that they were right.  It’ll fit.

Hope this finds you with a perfect fit,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith