Packing

I hate packing for trips, no matter how short. The entire process stresses me out. There is something about staring at a zippered box with borders—with its finite measurements and shallow pockets—that makes me dizzy. I feel somehow the box is asking me to make choices, to commit to some things and not others. To pre-plan, to be selective, to make judgments, to let go. In that one exercise of packing my bags I’m forced to contend with the limits of both time and space and this always unsettles me. I use my fingers to count the days I’ll be away and then I count my socks and underwear. But wait, now I have to consider how frequently I’ll be able to do laundry, or whether I will ever be in one place long enough for it to dry, or if I can pay a service to do laundry (and if the destination is China, will they even wash my underwear, or do I have to pack something I can hand-wash and easily dry?).

My friend, Joe S-D, practice-packs days (sometimes weeks) before he goes somewhere. One day in Chengdu he actually declined my invitation to dinner because he needed to practice-pack for an upcoming trip to Hong Kong. I totally got it—the friendship was sealed. My approach to this confrontation with impermanence is the opposite of Joe’s advance deliberations and negotiations over limits. I always wait until the last minute, which usually drives my husband and kids batty. This is my way of pretending it doesn’t matter, that I can live with or without anything, when all the while I am highly attached and end up packing deep into the night before leaving for most trips. I don’t practice-pack, but I “practice dress”, “practice read,” “practice write,” “practice work,” “practice giving gifts,” “practice getting sick,” “practice shower,” until I’m pretty much worn out by my imagined trip before I even zip the suitcase shut.

The first thing I do when I arrive anywhere is unpack. I love unpacking, even if it’s just for the night. Sometimes I unpack just so I can stand in awe of the sparseness of my life on the road, regardless of the stress it took to arrive there. I love the way my clothes never occupy more than a drawer or a portion of a closet, the way my toiletries hang on a hook near the shower, and my computer sits, solitary, on an uncluttered desk. I rarely fret about something left behind; I’m always happy, ultimately, to be stripped of dross.

We’ve only been in Chongqing for two days, and I’ve spent more time in my bare room since arriving than I’ve ever done my first few days with a student group in Chongqing. I have my faculty colleagues to thank for this, who have encouraged me to take care of my splinted hand and be selective of how and when I involve myself with the students. This year, more than ever, we’re sharing the load of trip logistics and student mentorship and we’re being creative about giving each other down time (justified as “work time”). I’m trying, I suppose, to pack and unpack my days as I would a suitcase, confronting the limits of time and space.

Yesterday morning I helped students figure out how to find food they could stomach for Chinese breakfast, and then attended a welcome ceremony and lunched with students and faculty friends. Rather than go on a campus tour with students, I spent the afternoon doing some much-needed physical therapy with my hand in my air-conditioned room, then wrote, Skyped by sister, emailed my husband, and napped. By the time I emerged from my room a mere 20 minutes before we were scheduled to depart for a welcome dinner, the swelling in my hand had been significantly reduced, but my work of the afternoon was apparently not quite done. I was greeted by students, streaming the hallways dressed in finery, who chided me for still wearing the program t-shirt and pants I’d worn to the opening ceremony. Clearly the group decided we were dressing up, and they waved me back to my room to clean up. Leadership had happened, despite my napping. I made a choice between my two un-packed dresses, two necklaces zipped into my toiletries, and my two shades of lipstick. Done.

There is nothing my students seem to stress about more before our trip than packing. All semester, this worried them. In January, after covering some content about Chinese culture in one of the required pre-trip courses, Paula and I asked the students if they had any questions, and of course they did: about packing. Internally, I rolled my eyes, while all the while I tried to reassure them it would all work out and their needs would be met. It probably also didn’t help matters that we didn’t get around to posting a packing list until a month before we were scheduled to depart. Somewhere on that list it said to pack an outfit or two for a dinner or party.

I love the energy I felt in that hallway last night—the fuss the students were making over one another’s appearance, the anticipation of their evening ahead, tempered with the apprehension that they may not be wearing the right stuff. I love the way they purposefully directed me back to my room to get with their program; to reconsider the possibilities packed into my box with its limits.

Space and time as we know it are finite. No wonder I tremble at my empty suitcase and at my still-crippled hand. My hours, free of their daily commitments, still number 24 at the end of the day, and beg somehow to be filled with intention. I’m experimenting, for these few days at least, with packing my days less (and letting others do some packing for me?), trying to remember that, when all is said and done, I rarely fret that something was left behind.