17th July 2016
The last few days have been extremely busy. We basically didn't sit down, which was to compensate for the fact that we had been procrastinating for two days. This sudden burst of activity started four days ago when Mum realised we had so little time left to pack the entire house up in.
She came running into the sitting room last Wednesday with the look of an epiphany on her face and I fairly wild look in her eyes. She stopped and gasped for breath, while Harriet, Lizzie and I looked on in confusion. We exchanged glances but none of us knew what was going on.
"Girls!" she began, "We really have to pack! We only have four days!"
I blinked. Lizzie straightened up in her seat. Harriet looked nonplussed.
"Girls! Now!"
None of us moved. We didn't know what to do.
"Girls?"
Harriet shrugged, alerting our mum to the fact we weren't actually sure of how to proceed with this information.
"Alright, let's see. Lizzie, you and I are going to the attic to sort through all the boxes of things that are up there. Harriet and Lucy, you can go to your rooms and pack them. Help each other if you want. I recall Lucy has already made a list of items needed for each room so you two should go and collect what you need from that," she paused and looked around at us. We still didn't move.
"Come on, chop chop! We need to go, now!"
Harriet sighed and dumped her laptop on the sofa while I went to the TV to pause the DVD Lizzie and I had been watching and turn off the screen.
Harriet and I went to the list and took the boxes, tissue paper and tapes we needed up to our rooms. I looked at Harriet before she pushed open the doors to her room and coughed.
"We should probably do this together. It would be a bit hard to pack an entire room by yourself," I said reasonably. She looked at me carefully, then nodded.
"We're starting with mine, though," she conceded. I agreed and we walked into her room.
It's quite a large room, to be honest. It's probably bigger than mine, which begs the question of why I chose mine in the first place. Oh, well, what's done is done.
It had a double bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a desk, a stand up lamp and loads of posters all over the walls. Luckily, apart from the posters, there weren't many trinkets or other things to pack away.
We started by pulling down her posters, one by one, and removing the BluTac from the backs of each. We rolled them, and Harriet had the ingenious idea of tying them with rubber bands she had stashed on her desk.
Then we moved onto her clothes and we packed them neatly and in an orderly fashion. She removed a few items from the pile of clothes to pack as we went, because of course she needed to have clothes for the next few days.
When we were done packing her room and it was basically empty, we moved onto mine. I didn't have so many posters - just a couple of old movie posters that I loved - but I did have a lot of little ornaments that had to be packed carefully in tissue paper. It was quite a tedious process, but I didn't want any of my sentimental items to get damaged.
Soon, we had completed both of our rooms and everything was inside boxes. We taped them up, my colour being purple and hers being blue, and dragged them downstairs to be put in the hallway.
When we had finished bringing all of the boxes downstairs I brushed my hands together to get rid of a bit of dust that was on them. The strange thing about packing is you realise there is actually dust in places you thought was clean.
YOU ARE READING
The Newness Of Life
Dla nastolatkówI don't suppose that your mum has ever told you she once had another child who she gave up for adoption? Mine hadn't either. Until today. I don't know what to do about it... How do I even react to that? I don't know. That's why I've decided to write...
