“Do you want this trash can?”

Mom texts a picture of a silver trash can.

“No mom, I don’t want the trash can.”

“Are you sure? It’s a nice trash can.”

“I know, mom. I gave it to you.”

“Oh.” Pause… “Do you want it back?”

Today I picked up the third, or maybe fourth, possibly twentieth load of supplies from mom’s apartment. My office is slowly being taken over by piles of things mom considers essential for a cross-country trip, with a few that are too precious for her to trust to the movers, and a few that she doesn’t quite know how to get rid of – ergo, the trash can. It’s like watching kudzu grow in the summer. Or the morning glory that creeps over from a neighbor’s yard and wraps around the wisteria no matter how often I prune it.

This process is more complicated than it sounds, because mom lives in an independent senior living apartment complex that is not allowing visitors due to the coronavirus epidemic. Given that they’ve been very conscientious about protecting the residents and have managed to avoid any cases of covid-19, I’m grateful for the staff, who periodically put up with a lot of crap over the rules.

However, it does make moving mom more difficult.

There’s a hand-off process. Mom wheels everything down to the lobby on her walker in multiple trips (unless she can sweet talk someone into helping, which she usually can). She then hands it over to a staff member, who ferries it over to me as mom stands inside, 20 feet away and I stand six feet outside the front doors. While the staff and I form a bucket brigade, mom shouts instructions. But between the mask and the multiple social distancing requirements involved, no one can quite understand what she’s saying, so she keeps repeating herself until she finally decides to just send me a text.

I then look for ways to defy the laws of physics and fit everything into the RV, take it all home, unload it into my office and wait for mom to call and tell me she has just a few more things for me to collect, if I wouldn’t mind.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

In a few days I’ll be collecting mom, the worried dog, and the criminal cats. They will all be living in my office for two weeks until we pick up the RV. My office. Which is where I work, which is in my house, which is lovely and magical but modest in size, not to mention already occupied by two people and two dogs.

Two weeks in my home office, then two weeks in an RV. I just know this is going to go well.

Who wouldn’t want it?