My pans. When oh, when will my pans arrive? Fiona left us a couple of pans, a few dishes, a mixing bowl, 2 cookie sheets and some flatware. Some odd glasses and mugs. I favor the one with sketches of Pooh Bear, not because I love Pooh, but because it is the largest. The pans are crap. I would have left them behind, too. They heat up, in like one spot, exactly where the burner is touching them, and despite the nonstick coating everything sticks to them and I have burned more in the last month than in the last ten years.
I miss my mugs. I miss the small brown clay one, round like a ball in the palm of my hand, with its rough exterior and carefully finger-painted stripes, its smooth green interior. I miss the blue clay one, with its faded suggestion of a dragonfly on the side, the one that feels as if it was made for my hand, fatter and thicker at the bottom and more narrow at the chipped rim, so my tea stays warm.
I miss my teapots.
My pans are Calphalon, by the way. They are thick and heavy and they get hot fast; they heat evenly.
I know I’m rambling but I also miss my clothes. I thought I brought enough to get by with Babe-ish, but she has outgrown just about everything in her drawers. And I miss our drawers.
I miss putting my children to sleep in their beds, and I wish I had their furniture so I could set up their rooms and put out their toys and make them more at home here.
I miss my books. My god, I really miss my books. I have a list of them that I use to make sure I’m actually reading all the books I buy, and today I was looking at that list and wishing I had any one of those books here so I could read them. I am working on a story about mental illness, told in the second person, and I need my Lorrie Moore, my Julie Orringer, my Mark Haddon.
Because I have been feeling this way, I have been calling the movers, trying to get some sort of status report on our things. I called before we left for Germany, trying to talk to “Dave,” some guy who was supposed to know how to help us. Dave was out, but he’d be back around 2:00. So I called back at 2:00, and Dave was busy, could he call me back? Sure, I said, leaving my California number–we have, via the marvels of modern technology, ported our old number so that it rings in our house in London. It couldn’t be easier, really for Dave and his people to call us back. So, of course, he never called.
When I returned from Germany, I called. Because of the time difference, I was able to call the night I got in, after taking one plane, three trains and a cab to get to our house. Dave was unavailable, could he call me back tomorrow?
I called on Wednesday, and Dave was—you guessed it—on the phone, and could he call me back?
Today, I had no illusions, really, that Dave might call. I called him, but I was prepared to tell Andy or Joe or whoever happened to answer the phone that I had called three days in a row, and twice last week, and I was prepared to wait for Dave to come the phone. Tell him it’s me again; tell him I’m waiting, please.
So, I talked to Dave just now, and he told me, yeah, he needed my address so he could send me a FedEx with some paperwork they needed.
I gave him the address and asked what sort of paperwork? “Oh, copies of your passports, a couple other things, then we can ship your stuff out.”
“Okay,” I said, not getting it, “Has it arrived in London, then?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, “It’s still sitting in our warehouse in Oakland.”
* * *
I could go on, obviously. I could tell you exactly what I said to him, about why no had one called me for 60 days to let me know they needed some “paperwork,” about how I had FedExed them money to expedite the shipment and had called them repeatedly, and was never told anything about “paperwork”; about how I was practically camping in an apartment with 3 children in London, waiting on our things, and even, about how my baby was fucking outgrowing her clothes waiting for them to arrive, and could he please, rather than making me wait on the international mail, just tell me what they needed, and work with me to expedite it so that our stuff could leave the mother-fucking dock, like, yesterday two months ago?
I am trying to get my head around this. I am getting ready to write some letters. I will not. Cry. I will not cry. I won’t.
