The Power to Act

I love vacations. Who doesn’t? It’s the days prior to departing that stress me out. I’m a college graduate with a master’s degree, and I still haven’t figured out the art of packing light. I was going on vacation for two weeks and, since you can only take one bag free, I chose the largest one. We were at the airport checking in our luggage when the Continental representative declared that my bag was four pounds over-weight. A correlation of Parkinson’s Law was inexplicably proven—my paraphernalia expanded to fill my suitcase.

They say that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, but this old dog is fed-up carrying this old bone; it’s heavy, tasteless and I’m ready to bury it once and for all. I want to master the art of lightening-up; both figuratively and literally. This is the first time that I’ve arrived at the ticket counter to be told by a pleasant enough reservationist, with a flat tone and a wry smile, that my bag was overweight. Really? It’s like the few extra pounds I’ve put on over the year shows up, not only on my frame, but in my luggage. Now I have to literally carry double the increased poundage when I travel. Where did this maddening habit of over packing come from?

While I was transferring my laptop to my backpack, and sundry books to Bruce’s suitcase, I thought—my mother would turn over in her grave if she saw my fifty-four pound bag! She didn’t pack much more than that for her family of twelve when we went on vacation for two weeks! When it comes to making the easiest of decisions about what to pack, I get stuck in the quick sand of indecision. After a lot of  futile action and struggle, I give up! Why struggle? Why not take it all? And the cycle continues! What is that all about?

My mother was a wizard when it came to packing. She didn’t do it with a swish of a wand and magic words. She did it by seeing a world where ‘less is better.’ As long as I can remember, she always used a small green hard shell suitcase and it didn’t matter if she was going for a week or a month; she only took with her what fit comfortably within its confines. Going to the beach, she would pack for herself and my father, night clothing, two pair of shorts with two tops, a few changes of underwear, bathing suits, beach towels, and their toothbrushes with toothpaste. They’d travel in clothing that would also be used for going to church Sunday. For the youngest children, she’d pack plenty of diapers and the minimal amount of clothing needed to be protected from the sun, kept warm when it was cold, and a portable stroller. Every few days there would be an excursion, not to the board walk, but to the Laundromats, and then we were set again for the next few days.

At nine years old, my mother declared that I was ready to pack my own belongings, and handed me a brown paper bag with my name on it, with directions to—Pack light! The first few years she’d check the contents to ensure that what I packed was both reasonable and practical. It was a rite of passage; and with the turning over of the baton, came the responsibility for taking with me what I needed. Some of us did better than others! In the excitement of departing one year my brother Patrick forgot his bag of clothes, so he spent the entire week in the clothes he arrived in. Each night my mother would wash his clothes out and he would put them on again the next day. Did he care? Not at all! What mattered was that he was at the beach and there was a whole world of fun to be had. He was like that his entire life; able to pack lightly, happy to be where he was and to do with what he had. He had inherited the packing light gene from my parents—I didn’t get it.

Absence that gene, my fun has been predicated on having the appropriate clothes. Although we came from the same dye lot, I was cut from a different bolt of cloth. Even as a child I spent hours thinking about what to pack; the problem has exacerbated by the sheer number of possibilities that I have today. Packing is a grueling 48 hour event. I check the internet for the extended weather forecast and then begin to fret about what exactly to bring; what coordinates, what shoes and clothes I may need, and if rain gear will be a necessity. Even knowing that if I forget something, I have the means to purchase it on the trip, doesn’t lessen the panic I feel when I begin to pack. It’s an irrational response; not to be confused with any kind of logic. It feels like the pressure of the universe is weighing me down; like these are life and death decisions. As a child I didn’t sleep the night before we departed because of the excitement; now I don’t sleep the night before but it has to do with anxiety. Is there a connection with the weight of my luggage and the weight of my inner dialogue as I pack my suitcase? I wonder?

The moment I wrote the words ‘lightening-up, both figuratively and literally’ the juices in my gut began to churn and I wondered what the connection was between the weight of my luggage and the stress I feel when packing. Is there a correlation between the self-imposed heaviness of my indecisive self-talk and the number of things that I stuff into my suitcase? You think! Now I see the dots connect. I understand now that the weightiness of my packing process increases the number of things I pack and, exponentially, the weight of my suitcase. If I held the process of packing lightly, I can see that I would I pack less? What a simple, but profound, realization! If I could cloak myself in my mother’s self-talk, (Less is better!) then there is a good possibility that  I could bring lightness to the whole experience of packing again; and the night before departing I could anticipate the excitement of the trip rather than the anxiety of the pack!

One positive thing that remains constant from my youth is that once I am on the road, my whole body relaxes and the stress of packing dissolves like bath salts in bath water as I settles into  ‘vacation mode.’ When I’m in the car and I’m humming down the road, I experience a whole body exhale that lasts until I return home. Even when I’m rolling my fifty-four pounds of belongings from town to town, I can laugh at the little girl that is still concerned about matching pieces and appropriate clothing, and cut her some slack. Next trip I’ll experiment by pretending that my mother, smiling down from above, has worked her magic once again and given me her packing gene, and I’ll finally let go of my heavy thinking and practice the art of packing light!

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