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HEAVY STUFF: CONFESSIONS
OF A FURNITURE MOVER

Journal of Healing – Nov. 1, 2006

By Mary Koch

Guys were coming the next day to shampoo the carpet in my husband’s bedroom – just the excuse I needed to move furniture.

I’m an inveterate furniture mover. When I was a kid, if I couldn’t sleep I’d get up and rearrange my bedroom. My mother was always mystified the next morning that I’d moved a heavy dresser and bed without waking the household.

Even so, John’s bedroom hadn’t been rearranged in the more-than dozen years since we’d set it up to accommodate his stroke disabilities. I’ve been reluctant to invade that space, when his personal space is invaded so much of the time. His very body is forever bathed, dressed and moved by others.

He spends up to 12 hours out of every 24 – about half his life – in his bed, not necessarily sleeping. That’s where he is dressed, undressed and exercised. So I asked if he wanted a new outlook, and he readily agreed.

I shifted the bed 90 degrees. That meant, of course, that I had to move almost everything else and re-move some items altogether. The result is more space and a challenge for his team of caregivers, who now must find everything in new locations – including John himself.

* * *

WITH THE old arrangement, we transferred John in and out of bed from the right side. Now we’re on the left.

The old set-up favored the left-handed. Now the one leftie among us is finding herself at crossed swords with the transfer equipment. “I’ll adapt,” she pledged with fierce determination.

Another caregiver readily approved the change. She said she moves furniture all the time. “Why?” I asked, thinking she’d give me some insight into my own obsession.

“Well, you just HAVE to,” she answered. Obsession defined.

I make up practical excuses, like, the only way to really clean a room is to move the furniture. It’s also a way of taking inventory. You’re more likely to notice things you don’t use or need, excess stuff you’ve been overlooking for years.

Truth is, I move furniture to gain a new perspective. We don’t travel as we once did. Rearranging our home is a way of traveling within the same space, making the old space new. There’s always a chance, when you move things around, that you’ll come up with a better arrangement.

“This is definitely an improvement,” I say to myself after turning a room upside down. I’ll be happy for an indefinite time, after which I’ll move the stuff back to where it was. And once again it’ll feel better.

* * *

THAT’S THE paradox of change, both at home and in life.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” says the old adage. That paradox is built into creation itself.

I recall my third grade teacher demonstrating how the solar system works. One child stood in the center of the room, representing the sun, while the rest of us “planets” orbited around her. It was a brilliant lesson, teaching us both the stability and changeability of nature, how altering perspective makes the same situation different.

Change, of course, isn’t easy. When I rearranged the furniture, I didn’t intend to move John’s enormous dresser by myself. I began by inching it out from the wall, just to clean behind it. Then I kept inching it along, throughout the afternoon. Push a little. Go do something else. Come back. Push a little more. Eventually, there it was, clear across the room in its new location.

And so do we move and change, inch by labored inch.

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