The Packer Upper

Today I dropped off three boxes of outgrown clothes: toddlers’ tops and pants; girls’ size-six summer stuff boys’ size-twelve shorts and tee-shirts. Not a tear shed, not a single sigh. My secret, you ask?

Arm’s length. All were donations on behalf of my clients to the local Goodwill.

I’m a professional packer-upper. My number is posted in the drop-off zones of every school and daycare in the city. Feeling overwhelmed? Your children are in college and you still can’t bear to part with the first communion dress? You need some clothing donations packed up? Who ya gonna call? A packer-upper!

I’m pushing fifty. I wear camo. I wear tough lightweight boots and pants with twenty pockets, each pocket packed with exactly what I need. My shirtsleeves are constantly rolled up. Underneath is a lacy push-up bra.

I’ve lived in two military conflict zones, and have escaped from forest fire once and deadly floods twice. I’ve learned to have sex standing up because the bedroom’s too destroyed to use. I’ve learned to live in the moment and flee a place forever. When it comes to worldly belongings. I’ve learned to be ruthless.

After I came to America, I worked as a closet organization consultant for California Closets. I naturally gravitated to step 1, packing up the old stuff. You might think that packer-uppers are needed most by the elderly and those considerate folks doing Swedish death-cleaning. Or by rampant consumerists who’ve suddenly converted to Kondoism. Or shopaholics whose garages are filled to bursting with packaged foods and brand-new camping gear and twenty-nine packages of DIY kitchen spice gardens because Price Club was having an irresistible sale.

No, it’s the parents who are most willing to pay. Those whose children are changing day to day so miraculously the parent can’t even open the kids’ sock drawers without being felled by the axe of nostalgia.

Last week, I was packer-upper for a mover. That’s right, a big, muscular guy, a dad whose day-job involves going into a home, packing each room, and transporting the load to a new city at the employer’s expense.

“My job’s a piece of cake,” he said. He meant it required no curation. He just had to pick the stuff up, bring it from A to B. He cried when I told him his kid’s size-six soccer uniform had to go. “Ever seen your kid score the tiebreaker?” he said.

I empathized, I said, but every item of kid’s clothing, once worn, has special juju and he had hired me to help him downsize. Look at it as “clearing the closet for bigger and better accomplishments,” I said.

Before that, I was a packer-upper for a famous fashion designer. Her kids had only hand-made clothes, many made by grand-maman, and of course the famous fashion designer wanted to keep every piece. “These must go,” I said.

“I will fire you,” she said.

“If haute couture is too easily available,” I warned her, “they’ll treasure off-the-rack for its rarity.”

She let me stay.

Before that, I was packer-upper to a parent who was a repo man. Twenty boxes of other people’s stuff on the lawn—fine by him. But the baptismal gown of his little princess?

These are all successful, functioning adults who have severe issues with handling their children’s outgrown clothes. The sentimentalists.

*       *       *

I acted as a volunteer packer-upper before I left my country of birth, when the hostilities were intensifying. I helped recent widows, clueless orphans, and freshly bombed-out homeowners. I helped refugees fleeing to the west and to the north. And of course my own family, telling each of my six siblings “one knapsack, that’s all.” I took my father by the hand to his room. I opened the closet door and said, “Pretend you are Mother, how would she pack your suitcase for you?” He packed so fast we even had time to take Mother’s favorite hat to the graveyard, spike it to her plot, and say a prayer before we left. Maybe someone stole her hat later. It was very nice.

Papa had one more request before we left the country. “I want us all to go say farewell to my mother,” he said but that was one thing I had to refuse. Grandmother was staying underground, in an unused subway tunnel where many of the people from her retirement lodge were sheltering. They didn’t have the stamina to march for days to get to the border, so they were living like mice in the big echoing tunnel. “No, Papa,” I said, “I cannot be confined.” I quivered with instincts for escape. Running, fighting, bribing: yes to all these. But no to burrowing. “Don’t box me in,” I said.

I blame this on Uncle Lucky.

*       *       *

My first professional gig was packing up stuff for my mother’s oldest brother. He would have become a subsistence farmer except that geologists discovered mineral deposits in the region. So Uncle Lucky took a diploma in mining technology, mortgaged the farm to buy a digger, and started his own mine. You can do that when you are first-born son and your name is Lucky. The minerals were rare earth elements, which are vital to certain alloys and catalysts. Rare earth elements are also important in creating permanent magnets, which are part of the future with smartphones, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and magneto-levitating rail lines. “Maglev uses two sets of magnets,” he told me, “one set to repel the train from the track, and the other set to move the train ahead. It’s all frictionless.” Something in real life that was frictionless? Sounded too good to be true. But I knew he kept up-to-date on science news.

Back to Lucky’s mine. The small operation kept getting bigger. He hired professional engineers but sometimes Mother Nature threw a curveball. Sometimes he needed someone young, strong, and not inclined to ask questions. I became the favorite niece.

Early one morning Uncle Lucky drove me to the mine, along with two trusted members of his crew. The mine was located on a hill without trees, a hill whose top was cut off, like a soft-boiled egg and the idea is you stick a spoon down into the yolk. Way, way down in this case. The top of the mine was dark and foreboding. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” I joked.

Nobody said a thing; it was like we didn’t speak the same language. We donned hardhats and coveralls and got into the mine elevator, which was big enough and strong enough to transport a truck, although it was empty when we got on.

We stopped two storeys down and got a reading on air quality. I could see wet rock on every side. The air smelled like petrichor. We went down many meters. I grabbed the bars of the elevator cage, praying the descent would end before my stomach rose to my mouth.

“Does the wet rock indicate flooding?” I asked. Again, nobody answered.

When we reached the bottom, Uncle Lucky patted my shoulder. “You’re doing fine. First trip down is always the worst.”

We took another air reading. “Twenty minutes,” the older crew member said.

The two crew members putt-putted the Kobelco excavator into the elevator. They picked up shovels and pick-axes. The chemical toilet. Uncle took photos and made notes.

I had three empty crates. I picked up hand tools and personal effects left by the miners who’d vacated in a hurry. Screwdrivers, lunch-kits, water bottles, flashlights. The fluorescent yellow and orange construction vests and sturdy cotton coveralls bearing a tang of sweat. That far down, the mine is warm, especially once you get working.

My armpits grew clammy. I felt lightheaded. I packed up my crates, lining up the lunch-kits like steel coffins, and sat in the elevator. I could not wait to leave. The tunnel was closing in around me like an earthen fist. I looked at the personal effects. The lunch-kits, the water bottles, the mounds of clothing. Like the cloakroom of a school or daycare.

THE END