Calum Hamilton
Expository Writing
Mr. Luthin
September 21, 2011
Moving Day
In the house, there was nothing. No furniture, no food, no décor, nobody. Everything they owned was sitting in their front lawn. Even their cats, were boxed up in their perspective crates, already gone. The moving truck was an hour late. The mother and her daughter had gone half an hour ago to catch their flight to Bangor, leaving Gordon and his son, Cal who was three at the time. They would drive some of their stuff up, all 15 fifteen hours from Columbus Ohio, to Orono Maine.
At the time, he didn't really know what was happening. All he had been told was that they were going on a long vacation, and taking everything with them. It wasn't that his parents didn't want him to know that they were leaving, he just wouldn't understand what was going on, this made it easier. The plan was for the mother and the daughter to fly with the cats, and arrive a day earlier than Gordon and Cal, who would take some extra stuff in the van, and drive to Massachusetts, then stop at a motel for the night and head up to Orono in the morning.
The kids had been up to Maine once with their parents, to look at houses. The parents each took a trip up to Maine to talk to the realtors, sort out the moving time, and see the sellers. The process was agonizing, because the kids loved each house they went to, but the parents would always find something wrong with it. They looked at houses on Forest ave., Noyes st., and a few on Bennoch rd. All the potential houses had something wrong, like the kitchen would need renovating, or there was a high chance of floods in the wet season. They had made a decision on a large house, a few blocks away from downtown Orono. The property they decided on was in a good location; they were close enough to the schools that they could walk there in the morning. It was near the center of town, where all the restaurants and stores are. The house had three stories, 2 decks, 6 bedrooms, and three bathrooms. It had an enormous kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a family room, and a one car garage. The house was in good condition, no work needed, fairly well taken care of. The backyard was present, though not prominent. All in all the house was a good find.
The day before the move was very hectic. Everyone was running around trying to get their stuff together, and ready to be packed up and sent away in the truck. By the end of the day, the family had managed to pack everything up and move it all into the dining room. It's kind of eerie to walk through a house, your former house, and see nothing where there should have been a sofa, or a coffee table. You walk into a room, and almost fall on your ass, because there isn't the ragged love seat, that a few hours ago was left undisturbed. You sit down with a bowl of cereal, and look for your kitchen table for a few seconds, before realizing that it's 500 miles away from home. The size of your flat increases about 50% when the furniture is absent.
That night they slept on camping mattresses in sleeping bags in the living room, the only room in the house with a carpet permanently in it. The next morning, Cal woke up at five AM due to the lumpy mattress and the sun shining in his eyes. The day was calmer than the previous day. They woke up, and went to the diner for breakfast. The exhausting part was over, all they had to do was wait for the moving truck to come at noon, pack their stuff into the truck, and make tracks for Orono.
As things go, it's never very easy to leave your home. Not necessarily your house, but your town, neighborhood, and your friends. The kids didn't totally understand why they had to say goodbye to all their friends, and why their were copious going away parties, but they had a pretty good idea.
When this was all happening, Cal thought that he was getting a great deal. He thought that cars were much faster than planes; all you do is pull onto the road, and go. With planes you