“The baby crib is ready.” This was the Russian removalist at 11 p.m. on moving day, clambering down from the top floor of our new house in Troy, New York (ominously, “Home of Uncle Sam”). After leaving Brooklyn — under three hours away — the movers went missing for four hours in the mid-Hudson and didn’t reappear until after 8. Noodle Hubs asked them to reassemble the kids’ bunk bed first, so the kids at least could go to sleep, but, as with all moves, things had been lost in transit — a shared understanding, and also a short set of cling-wrapped drawers. The “baby crib” had been put together dead last, and smelled like cigarettes, but otherwise looked just as it had in Brooklyn.
In spite of the lovely hills and lure of Two Toilets, I knew I would feel homesick when we moved, so I Googled Australian meetups in the capital region. The search turned up a list of kennel clubs:
I’ve otherwise been exploring the town in my running shoes, so I’m not spending all day in the house editing lung cancer articles, blasting Peter Allen, and coloring in my eyebrows. (The outdoor scene is very promising: forty minutes away, we found a smooth waterfall to clamber up, nearby a pot shop with curb service, provided — we found out — you first let your children out up the road and drive back with empty carseats.)
Everyone has handled the move differently. Noodle Hubs coped by purchasing an orbital sander (“I think we need an orbital sander,” he said on Day Three). Scout, always trying to muster that pixie dust, has seemed thrilled — “Moving was the best idea everrr!” — but also turned the fridge into a bulletin board for everyone she misses in Brooklyn.
Japhy ran circles in the backyard the first time he saw it, yelling, “I love our house!”
Another day, and different emotions, expressed through a vocabulary sourced from MLB TV. “This house is NOT PERFECT!”
Maybe he meant that he missed his school, or his best friend, or his tee ball team, but that isn’t how he talks. He looked at me meaningfully the other day, his face right by mine, and told me, “the Yanks have a lot of might.” There are daily reminders that we aren’t always speaking the same language or seeing the world through the same prism — see: at the dinner table:
JAPHY: (out loud) Are nipples part of your body or part of your head?
SCOUT: What, man?
JAPHY: (covering nicely) Is a meatball a head or a body?
During the move, I was reading Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals In That Country (named after the Atwood poem), an Australian novel about a viral pandemic that causes people to hear animals’ voices and, in the process, go mad, entire families marching like lemmings over the line breaks in their heads. The story follows Jean, a bawdy, sometimes drunk grandmother who works at an Australian Zoo-type wildlife center under her daughter-in-law Ange, and helps watch her granddaughter Kim.
Jean and Kim are close, each on the periphery of the high-functioning adult world, but McKay doesn’t overplay Jean’s understanding of what her granddaughter thinks or how she feels. Like the animals of the park, the inner thoughts of children are a bit of a mystery, and when the animals begin to be heard, it is slightly alien to how we formulate ourselves. Here is a horse, as Jean approaches:
The sweet hand
is here.
It’s
here.
Jean has an indeterminate relationship with Sue, a dingo from the park, who veers from biting to helping her human mate. It’s never totally clear who is in charge:
I’m big. I’m
a pack.
No one is the size of
me.
I’m the parent, I think as I sit on the back steps holding up my phone to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Whitney Houston’s 1991 Super Bowl version) for Japhy, who is standing in the backyard in a Yankee Stadium-shaped pen I built from green and purple connectors, hand on his chest, ready to hit some imaginary home runs. “Wave your flag!” he instructs as it finishes, and I shake some spare rods, just a supporting character in this scene. “Play ball!”
How do the kids like the house? Depends on what you listen to. We find a hike that goes behind a waterfall into a cave. “Best adventure ever!” says Scout, returning to her workdesk to draw more pictures of herself holding hands with downstate friends. Japhy’s bestie visits, and they spend two days held together by some invisible lunatic valency. He yells after her car that he loves her, but has no commentary once she’s gone. “MUMMYYYYY” yelled by an overtired child starfished in Yankee pinstripes on his bed is not always a call to me specifically but an exclamation for the world, I have learned. OH MOON. yell the insects. DON’T LET MY LIFE PASS.
The boxes are mostly unpacked. We settle into an absurd amount of space and I feel the pull of a porch filled with hay bales and dangling skeletons. Scout stops asking every hour for her camp counselor, and a letter arrives from a friend. Japhy sings “watermelonsugar” while rearranging the magnets on the fridge. Noodle Hubs nods at a yard, walking to school. “I saw this guy out with his lawn trimmer.”
The edges are, I mean, very neat.
“We should just get one,” I say.
So, if we are each in our own reality, which is the real Aaron Judge?
I can’t believe we paid thousands of dollars for movers to transport this shoebox aquarium
Goodies
Loved this Dirt installment on the Random Restaurant Bot.
Do you know “Chesty Puller”? A wild rescue story.
“I can’t bury my heart anywhere on this earth”: Esther Kim and Paige Aniyah Morris translate two poems by Sister Claudia Lee Hae-in.
“The white feminists decided that war and occupation were essential to freeing Afghan women. Notable examples include then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who enthusiastically voted for the war, calling it a ‘restoration of hope,’ and New York Representative Carolyn Maloney, who wore a blue burka to the House floor and made impassioned declarations about how claustrophobic the garment was.” — Rafia Zakaria, always so good.
“Four Hurricanes” by Lauren Stroh.
Sara Peterson on “Do your research!” influencers.
“Omar comin’” by Niela Orr
“By the time I was born, my mother had already left London behind, and with it any connection to the Yugoslav community. Everything she had known – the infamous Notting Hill of Peter Rachman, complete with tenements and brothels; the Yugoslav cafes and restaurants – disappeared… And finally, Yugoslavia vanished too.” — Natasha Tripney in Vittles
“It’s important to keep in mind that, in the year of our Lord 2021, every dumbass knows how to write.” — Rick Paulas in Popula.
Close your eyes and travel to a time when this could hold your boobs.
Thank you for reading KAFKA’S BABY <3 <3 Would love to know what you think about moving if u care to share!