In which leaving New York proves to be far more difficult than anticipated: an epistolary account.
Dear Calf,
I was really upset with you when we first got hurt a week ago. If you were tired of playing tennis, you could have nudged me gently, no? Given me a little twinge, a little, “Hey, lady, maybe that’s enough for today?” Instead, you had to go and explode as I was running for the ball (a forehand I totally would have hit, by the way). That POP! you made — such a terrible noise. And the pain. Wow. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t move without your screaming at me. You made me cry, in public. Not cool, Calf. Not cool.
This was not how I’d expected to spend my last week in New York — on crutches, pleading to see a doctor, unable to take the subway, laid up in the apartment with still so much to do, and us (you and me, Calf — we’re in this together, remember?) unable to do it.
But I have to hand it to you: You’ve pulled through like a champ. Five days after the injury and we were hobbling around without crutches. Seven days after the injury and we were limping a whole three blocks, unassisted. (Never mind the bearded guy’s jokes: “It looks like you’re speed-walking in slow-motion!”) Eight days after the injury and we were climbing up and down stepping stools and lugging a dozen boxes’ worth of kitchen stuff (how do we have so much kitchen stuff?) around our new apartment. Nine days after the move and our slow-motion speed-walk is starting to resemble a normal, human-person-type walk. No, we haven’t started physical therapy yet, but we will soon. I’d say your future looks bright.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear C.,
Had you not been there to rush in and save me, I would have been even more of a wreck than I was. It wasn’t about the luck of having a car to drive me home. It was about the care and kindness and concern, and the patience and positive spirit. The carrying me off the court and running for ice and procuring of medicines and balms and crutches, and the offering of a couch to rest on and a shoulder to cry on. How lucky am I to have you as a friend? Very. I wish you and your gorgeous wife and beautiful son and charming dog the best of all possible things.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear Handy Helpers,
I was so looking forward to meeting you. We’d set our date weeks in advance — Saturday, 8 a.m., you, me, lots of boxes, two flights of stairs — and I’ll admit, I was excited. I was especially excited because having recently torn my calf muscle I was particularly in need of your services. I was counting on you. I’d planned the entire day around you. It was all going to be … perfect.
A few days before the big day, I called to confirm. You didn’t call back. (A little worrying.) The day before the big day, I called again. You answered and said you needed to check your files. (I was a bit hurt. How could you forget me?)
Then you sent a message: “Text me the time and address please.”
I did.
“No problem,” you said. “How many hours did you book?”
Two men, two hours.
“Great thank you,” you said.
That was the last we communicated. But I thought we were all set, you know? I thought “Great thank you” translated to something like “Great we’ll be there.”
Never assume.
At 8 a.m. you didn’t show up. At 8:20 I texted you: “Good morning from BK. Are you en route?” I called: straight to voice mail. I rang the moving service through which we’d booked you; they said to give you until 9:20. At 9:20 you didn’t show up. At 9:30 you didn’t show up. I called the moving service again. The only option was to cancel your asses. And then panic. And swear. A lot. A lot a lot a lot. And then scramble.
Because of you, a move-out that should have taken three hours, max, ended up taking ten. That’s right: TEN. Because of you, I had to cancel the moving help we’d already paid for on the Cambridge end (thus inconveniencing and impoverishing the friendly and earnest student who had agreed to help us). Because of you, I had to make dozens of phone calls and navigate through countless infernal machine-voiced menus and spend hours listening to soul-sucking hold music, trying to find human beings who would actually show up.
You suck. If you own a dog, I hope that in the night, as it sleeps beside you, it develops a spectacular case of diarrhea and poops all over you. A lot.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear B.,
You are my hero. Thank you for packing a third of the truck all by yourself — up and down and up and down and up and down those stairs — while I frenziedly hunted and pecked on my phone for movers, any movers, who could help us get the hell out of dodge.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear CE Professional On Time Labor Services,
Thank you for showing up on such short notice. And for being of sweet disposition and strong body. Maybe you didn’t know how to pack a moving van. But that’s OK. Together — your muscle, our moving-van-as-jigsaw puzzle-solving skills — we got the job done.
May your future hold much success and happiness and oodles of chocolate chip cookies and cute-cute puppies that come housetrained and stay puppylike forever and don’t stink or slobber or poop in the bed.
Love,
Jen
p.s. Excellent name. Never change it.
**
Dear I-95 North, I-84 East and I-90 East,
Thank you for being traffic-free late on a Saturday night.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear Apartment,
I’m sorry if we barged in and caught you unprepared. Yes, I understand that we arrived quite late. But you’d had a good three weeks’ lead time to get yourself all gussied up before we moved in, no? Certainly enough time to be swept, vacuumed, polished, picked up after; to have your walls and countertops scrubbed and your holes spackled and your broken parts replaced or at least Super-Glued into place and your drains unclogged of the previous tenant’s hair and that fried chicken that’d been under the refrigerator so long it’d become petrified tossed out and that used Q-tip plucked off the floor and the toilet flushed and…
Actually, I’m being too hard on you. You’re gorgeous now that we’ve climbed up on and into and underneath all your cubbies and crevices to scour and swab and disinfect you. You clean up quite nicely. I think we’re going to like it here.
Love,
Jen
p.s. Sorry if this message seems rather ... dirty. But if we're going to live together we may as well start being frank.
**
Dear Neighbors Moving & Storage,
Thank you for showing up and getting everything off the truck and into our new apartment undamaged, in record time. Will you be free, oh, ten months from now? I don’t know about you, but I feel as if we have a good thing going here. Let’s stay in touch.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear Ear,
I’m Sorry.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear Can of Tomato Soup,
Let me start by saying I know it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have put you on such a high shelf. And if I was going to put you on such a high shelf, I should have done it from a stepping stool, and not from the tilted tops of my tippy-toes.
But did you have to do that? Really? The ear?
If you were going to fall, there were so many other ways you might have done it. You could have waited until I turned to the side, and then dropped onto my slightly more padded shoulder. Even better, you could have waited until I bent over to pick something up and then tumbled onto my exceedingly well-padded derriere. But no. You had to fall a split second after I slid you onto the too-high shelf and hit me, at full velocity, on the left ear.
You’ll be happy to know that the ear swelled up like a juicy grape and turned a lovely shade of violet and crimson. Also that if anything touches it, it now lets out a pain-zing of protest. And: No sleeping on that side of the head for a while.
Sure, it could have been worse. You could have weighed 32 ounces instead of 16, or you could have broken my eyeglasses or hit me square in the eye and given me a nice shiner. And then I would have arrived at my first day of Nieman orientation limping, with a black eye, and my fellow fellows would have been like, “Yikes — stay away from that chick.”
So yes. Thanks for avoiding the face. But still.
Love,
Jen
**
Dear Cambridge,
I hope we’ve gotten all the drama out of our systems. It’s true that I’m often clumsy, but I promise I’m not usually this wounded and crazed. We’re looking forward to settling in for a while. It’s going to be a great year. Right?
Love,
Jen
