bearing blog

So this is day 19, easy to keep track of since we arrived on September first. We leave in a week. How long did it take to get used to the time difference? To being here in general?

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Sleeping first. It was maybe two or three days before I had gotten enough rest to recover from the overnight travel and for the clock time to stop feeling wrong. But I don’t think I ever fully shifted my sleep patterns. I am waking much later in the morning, some days not till 9 am. I am going to bed fairly early, soon after a late-ish dinner. I have a bout of wakefulness every night in the wee hours. I need an afternoon rest time.

I don’t remember having this issue before. Is it age-related, perimenopausal restlessness? Is it anything to do with Mark’s having to call in to work meetings, sometimes at 10:30 p.m., with people in the Midwest? Is it a relic from the couple of years I spent getting up to give a 2:30 a.m. dose of medication to a teenager? Or is it from being mentally checked in to the U.S. news cycle and the activity patterns of my friends on social media? (I’ve already run out of high speed data on our temporary international plan.)

It could really be any of these. In our current circumstances, it isn’t really a big problem, though. We have the space and time to rest, and it’s okay to keep weird homeschooling hours on days when we school.

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My appetite has been off kilter for sure. Not the amounts but the timing.

I almost can’t eat breakfast. I can manage a yogurt cup before eleven, and maybe a glass of juice. I mean, if someone goes and brings back pastries, I can eat those, but it is not because I am hungry. And I can drink coffee, about the same amount of caffeine in the morning as I always do. I like the Nespresso machine a lot. Two pods set on the “longest” setting, one on top of the other, makes one satisfactory cup of coffee.

Then later, especially if I didn’t eat pastry or yogurt, I get ravenous around 1 pm. We’ve been having our biggest meal at lunch time, and that seems to suit, since Mark often has a string of meetings around dinner time. That’s when we tend to go to a restaurant with the kids and have a slower paced meal, with wine, and usually we decline the dessert course and go get ice cream cones afterwards. So we’re done with the big lunch around 2:30 or 3.

If I need to shop for dinner, that’s when I go. The kids are resting, Mark is working, and I am full of lunch and will not be tempted to buy all the good things.

Often I’m not even really hungry when dinner rolls around. I’ve cooked a full meal a few times, but a lot of dinners are charcuterie, cheese, bread, butter. Olives, maybe, or a jar of tuna-stuffed cherry peppers. Salad greens. And a bottle of wine. Sometimes Mark and I go out. It was easy to have a light dinner in Menton, like broiled fish or steamed mussels; the fare up here in the mountains is heartier. I can’t finish my salads.

Last night I felt so full after dinner, and the not-enormous quantity of wine had gone so much to my head, that I felt like I really needed a day to live on mineral water and plain yogurt.

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It could be that I felt off, stuffed, because yesterday was the first day in a while that I did not do a lot of walking. It was a work day for us, and based on Mark’s meeting schedule we decided to stay in the house for lunch. We had enough food on hand, including leftover homemade chicken soup. So I didn’t go anywhere at all till it was time to take the kids out, first shopping for climbing shoes, and then dinner as Leo requested at Annapurna, the Indian restaurant that has been here since the early 90s.

Physical activity patterns: so different for all of us. Leo, who has an orthopedic issue which limits his leg endurance, has walked more than I think he has in years, mostly on his own exploring. I have gone shopping for food and other necessities most days, on foot, carrying groceries back in reusable shopping bags that are definitely coming home with me as utilitarian-yet-slightly-chic souvenirs. Our rental house is 500 meters down a street that’s pinched between the river and the train tracks, so there’s a bit of a hike to get anywhere.

There’s a walk after dinner almost every night, even the evenings we dine at home, because that is how you get gelato.

But on-purpose exercise totally fizzled out. Mark’s not been doing much running; he gave himself shin splints on one hill run in Menton. As for my routine, lap swimming is out, and I don’t do open water. Obviously I cannot bring my free weights here. I didn’t feel motivated to join a salle de musculation seeing as I prefer lifting privately at home. I did bring a set of resistance bands and I did one session with them back in Menton… but…

…I feel tired and sore, the good kind of tired and sore, from all the walking all the time! It very much feels like I’ve had enough exercise. I don’t know if it’s an illusion or not but it sure feels like I fall into bed every night with aching, used muscles all over. Just as if I had swum a mile or run 5K.

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I am really curious how fast I can reintegrate into our normal life back home. I wonder if any new habits will persist, for better or for worse.

I did hear that there is going to be a new ice cream place going in to our neighborhood, within walking distance…

So I mentioned that I had a story from lunch. As we were walking back across town from the landing field, I asked the boys what they wanted to have for lunch. Simon said, “Fries and a cheeseburger, the good ones at that one restaurant,” and Leo agreed.

I knew which one they meant. There’s a restaurant called L’Hydromel which is not only a restaurant but a meadery. (“Hydromel” is mead.) They were in business last time we came to Chamonix, and back then I ordered the tasting flight of six meads to try, which was fantastic, if you ever have a chance to taste six different meads at once I highly recommend it. There’s far more variation in flavor than you might expect.

We’d already had one meal there this week, and had discovered that they have the best French fries of anywhere in France, the sort you would get in a really good American bar and grill or maybe even an upscale place that has steak-and-fries. Deeply brown and crispy, salted. Proper fries. And they do a smashburger. Correctly. I was perfectly happy to return, so I texted to Mark to meet us there. We ordered sodas and burgers for the kids, a flight of liqueurs for Mark and me; I ordered a “berliner” sandwich; fries for everyone.

The wait staff we’ve had all the times has been really friendly, and when the waiter came by a bit later and asked how we were doing, I told him how the kids had just done their first parapente and so we were celebrating. He congratulated them, and also complimented my French, which always makes me feel good. I suppose the liqueurs had helped it along a little.

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The restaurant is in the pedestrian-only zone of Chamonix. It’s signed like this:

But for some reason, there was a car parked on the wide sidewalk, just in front of one of the big tree planters spaced along here and there in front of the stores.

And it was not an ordinary car. It was a cherry-red antique rally car.

Intriguing! It was the sort of thing one might expect that a store owner would pay to have in front of the store for a while to attract customers, maybe, if he sold aviator sunglasses or driving shoes. However, this car was parked in front of a lingerie boutique. Curious. Even curiouser, the car had a Louisiana license plate. What?

The car attracted attention. People were coming to look at it and take pictures. At one point in our lunch we overheard a conversation in accented English, between the two gentlemen who were having lunch at the table behind me and a passerby, and we gradually realized that the two gentlemen were the ones who had driven the car here and parked it.

The gist of this is that they were taking part in an annual navigational rally of historical vehicles (the Tour of Legends) over the weekend. They mentioned getting lost, and it seems they were mid-rally right now and had accidentally skipped a town and gotten to Chamonix too early. And decided to have lunch.

Anyway, they (one might have been French, I’m not sure, but one of them was Irish) were telling the young man on the other side of the fence, who was from Poland, about the history of said car. It is the Ferrari LM Sport which, driven by Piero Taruffi, won the Giro di Sicilia rally in May 1955. And now it’s a collector’s item, I guess. We never did hear why it has a Louisiana license plate.

At one point one of the gentlemen shouted over the fence at a woman who was taking pictures, because she came rather close to the car and he thought she might try to sit on it. “Touche pas, huh,” I said to him, but he did not think that was funny.

Mark went and took a few more pictures of the car to send to a Car Guy friend of his, who, he thought, might appreciate the photos. I hadn’t figured this out at this point, but Mark had come to the realization that this was an eight-to-ten-million-dollar car.

(Mark’s friend the Car Guy was suitably appreciative of the photos.)

Anyway, as the gentleman were coming to the close of their lunch, the waiter gently came by and indicated that they should look out in the street, where what should we all spy but three members of the municipal police, standing around and looking extremely put out by the existence, on the sidewalk, in the zone where no one is supposed to be driving anyway, not just a car but an Italian car with American plates.

Cue the gentlemen hastily getting up and going over to explain to the French police what in the world they thought they were doing parking there.

Mark found this whole situation excruciatingly funny, but he had to explain to me why it was so funny. “Because if you wanted to have this car park in your town in order to attract attention and people to the shops, there is no way you could pay anyone to bring it here. But now that it’s here they definitely don’t want it here, it’s only a nuisance. And also, what I think happened here is they wanted to have lunch in Chamonix but they didn’t want to leave the car somewhere they couldn’t keep an eye on it. But practically the whole town is a pedestrian zone. So they just decided to drive into the pedestrian zone and park the car on the sidewalk where they could see it from where they were eating. I don’t know why they thought they wouldn’t get in trouble for it.”

The waiter came by and I said to him, “I was asking myself how they got permission to park there! I suppose they just thought that their car was so cool” (I used the English word) “that no one would stop them?”

The waiter shrugged and said, “They’re being completely stupid. At this time of day, you can’t have delivery vehicles here, you can’t even drive a postal truck. And you definitely can’t park a private vehicle on the sidewalk like that.”

After discussing the situation with the police for a few minutes they realized they had to move the car. So they (I am not kidding) pulled out a set of vintage leather driving helmets with vintage driving goggles and shoved them down over their heads, at which point it started to feel like a scene directed by Terry Gilliam.

They climbed into the car and spectators started to back away, many of them (including Mark) recording the scene on their cell phones. “Attention!” one of them snapped, rather huffily, at the three cops who were all standing behind the car gesturing at him. “Attention à la fume!” As in, get out of the way or you are going to be eating my exhaust.

And then he attempted to start the engine, but it took a moment or two before it really turned over, which was perhaps a little anticlimactic for his taste, I don’t know. But he got it going eventually.

Anyway, Mark was so glad he had not hiked down the mountain, because he would have hated to have missed this, and without his help I would never have caught the significance. Maybe our older kids would have, since they spent a significant chunk of their childhoods bingeing Top Gear.

We had a plan for Monday that involved going up in the Aiguille de Midi gondola to the mid-station. We were in the act of gathering gear and putting on warm clothes, packing backpacks and locating granola bars, when we received information from the top: Not today. Too windy and cloudy up there. They may close the lift.

So. Need to pivot.

I conferred with Mark and we elected to make it a work day instead of a fun day. A certain number of our days here must be work days; Mark doesn’t quite have enough vacation otherwise, at least if we want to travel to be with family at Christmas. So there’s a lot of sense in working when the weather doesn’t cooperate.

However, this is a little sad for the kids. They were expecting a day on the mountain, and instead they must do math and other schoolwork. Literally already have their hats and hiking boots on: Sorry kids, not today. It isn’t safe enough in the weather.

This is a lesson you must learn, though, if you value life and limb, and you want to do any sort of weather-dependent activity that has objective hazards. It could be skiing, ski touring, climbing, and backcountry camping. Or it could be any sort of boating, or hiking at altitude, or road cycling. You must learn to let go of your plan when conditions change.

A lot of metaphors out here under the sky.

Pivoting from one outdoor activity to another can be hard enough. Mark and I did briefly discuss substituting a pretty, low-altitude hike. But pivoting from fun day to school day was pretty hard, even though everyone knows it frees up another day later, maybe one with better weather.

So there was a little more frustration than usual. Things seemed harder to do. One of the kids got through only about half of a day’s work before it was clear he was done. Anyway, we broke for lunch after that and tried to find a good restaurant that also had a cheeseburger and fries.

There’s a place that brews their own mead and has smashburgers and really good, American crispy tavern-style fries. I had mead called “le sang du Viking” and a tarte flambé “la végétarienne.”

Not much to report for the afternoon. Some work, some shopping, a meal of snacks and leftovers. Mark had to take a meeting till 7 pm and another at 10:30 pm, but that was long enough for a pleasant dinner and a bottle of wine. No complaints. Hope for better weather Wednesday.

The first part is here.

After lunch we came around past Turin on the bypass and west toward the long Fréjus tunnel. Signs warned us that there was a backup leading up to the tunnel, which is something you just have to expect; maybe even more with Mont Blanc’s tunnel closed. It seemed to us that some sort of accident had caused the backup, because at one point an ambulance came up from behind. But even after an obstruction is cleared, it takes time to get the backup through, since cars have to go at a reduced speed and at wide intervals.

I think we sat in the traffic jam for… hm, ninety minutes? Sixty? Simon got impatient but I felt positive. Once we got to the tollbooth it was smooth sailing.

Out of it again, though, and it was mountain driving. I am permitted to drive the car here, we paid for the supplemental driver, but I think neither Mark nor I wanted me driving it in the mountains. I hate mountain driving even in good weather and in my own car, let alone this behemoth in the rain. Mark drove, and I was confident in his abilities on the well-maintained and just-wide-enough twisty roads through the gorges, but I heard some alarmed mutterings and a couple of “Yikes!” from the driver’s seat.

The gorges were, uh, gorgeous but very twisty, and Simon was carsick into a sturdy plastic grocery bag we had given him just in case. We complemented him on his fortitude and presence of mind, and drove on. Leo helped him find something to clean his face with. Part of a cardboard box, I think. Eventually we emerged into a town still decorated with flags from, I think, when the Tour de France came through.

That’s most of the remaining adventure from yesterday, I think. More adventure later today, and also some tomorrow; then perhaps work.

We have stuffed all our things into the back of the rental car, an enormous (to us) Volvo SUV that Mark is not enjoying driving, and made our way a few hours inland, from that charming just-big-enough walkup over the top of an office with a temp agency and a one-person tutoring center, to the ground floor plus walkout basement of a really charming house.

The house is so cozy but with plenty of room that it really makes me miss my college-age and grown kids. It has three bedrooms, two with double beds and one with a set of bunks, and we totally could have fit all seven of us once upon a time when children shared beds if we told them to and/or would have been happy to soend all their time on this sprawling sofa in TV room.

So far the only downside I have discovered is that there is no drip coffee maker, and so this morning I will need to go through at least six Nespresso pods all by myself.

I did find a battered French press in the cabinet, but I am skeptical as I have only the finely ground coffee that is the norm around here.

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I had laid out three different plans for the drive back, to be selected from as conditions permitted. The first we later found out would never have beem possible, because the tunnel under Mont Blanc is temporarily closed all this autumn. The second, which we used, took us along the coast into Italy, then across Piedmont to just outside Turin, then west under the Alps back to France via a different, 13-km-long tunnel called Fréjus, followed by some driving through mountain gorges. The third option was tunnel-free in just France, ended the same as the second route, but would be 90 min longer than the tunnel routes if they were to go smoothly.

I think maybe the best reason for the second one is so we could have lunch in Italy. Especially since with Mont Blanc tunnel closed, we can’t get back and forth easily to have lunch in Italy again. And even if lunch in Italy is just at a gas station grill.

Mark and Leo went through the cafeteria style line and got lasagna and “patatine steakhouse” while Simon and I went to the panini station. Simon, who is learning Italian as his homeschool language, told the busy man behind the counter, “Voglio un trancio di pizza,” and was perfectly understood.

(I told Mark proudly later, and he went: “Trancio! Oh, a tranche! A slice!” Indeed! Cognates are cool.)

Anyway, the man cut a generous portion of pizza from the case, enclosed it in a parchment-type paper, and set it to heating in the panini press. Then he went back to taking other orders. I wasn’t quick enough with mine, and a handful of coffee drinkers got theirs in first. I watched as he set a batch of saucers and spoons on the bar then turned to make the corresponding number of espressos, then set them up, then turned back to me and I asked for a panino frescotto from the case. He nodded and then went to fetch Simon’s pizza out of the panini press, put my sandwich in, cut the pizza in two and put it on a ceramic plate next to the lemon Fanta Simon had chosen from the fridges.

Leo and Mark were at the far other end at the restaurant tables, and people around me were eating standing at the bar. I asked the man, “Può pagare qui e mangiare allì?” while gesturing vaguely at the restaurant, and he spoke to me and I understood that the answer was yes, and in fact I could proceed to the cash register around the corner where I hadn’t noticed it, while my panino heated. I sent Simon with his plate and drink over to find Mark and went around to the cash register, where somehow, a cheerful “Scusi, signore, non so il sistema,” came out of my mouth as I presented my credit card. Even though I think maybe the right verb should have been conosco. Anyway, he answered me at length and at least part of that was something like, it’s not that hard, don’t worry about it, the only system here is that you give me money and I give you food and coffee.

I have not been studying Italian nearly as long as French, and I love the French language, but there’s something about Italian that makes it a lot more… relaxed, easy, and fun. Less energy pushing the breath out through the linguistic works. Less stress about getting it exactly right. And understanding it… I am pretty good at French aural comprehension, but Italian sometimes feels weirdly like I have a Babel fish in my ear. I couldn’t tell you word for word what was said but I get the important bits.

My sandwich was good. A boiled ham with a thick crème fraiche and an arugula pesto. Simon loved his pizza. While Mark was putting gas in the car I went back to the bar for an espresso, drank it standing up, paid in coins and went on my way. Arrivederci.

Mark, Simon, and I took the train back to Nice this morning, just to pick up a rental car.

The rental counter was easy, and we were helped by a friendly staffer named Jean-Félix (I introduced Simon, whose middle name is Felix, so they had something in common). We need a big SUV because we have rather a lot of baggage, and one thing about European cars is they don’t often have a lot of trunk space. Back when we traveled with all seven of us, we had to get a nine-seater van.

Our first challenge was getting it out of the rental company garage. You know those tight spiral ramps? I was frankly amazed someone got it in.

So Mark carefully maneuvered it into the helix and drove excruciatingly slowly down to the next level to the sound of one beep-beep-beep warning us that the right passenger door was about to scrape the inside wall and another beep-beep-beep warning is that the left headlight was about to scrape the outside wall. Mark threaded that needle all the way down. Whew! Time to drive in the center of Nice, France’s fifth-largest city!

We made it out with only one wrong turn and got on the A8 back to Menton. That part wasn’t hard at all. Highway driving is not much different from at home, and after 12 days here we knew how to get to the garage we were aiming for.

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After finishing up at the rental counter but before fetching the car, we needed to get lunch. Originally we planned to do a little sightseeing in town, but Simon was hungry now so we just went to the first open pizza-and-panini shop we found.

We ordered a pizza for Simon and paninis for us, and while Mark did phone searches to try to confirm that our rental SUV would not exceed the 1.8-meter height limit of our parking garage, I studied the placemat menu to learn about the types of pizza available here. Many were familiar from Menton or other places, but a few were novel. I posted a pic straight to IG.

If I had noticed the Alessandra I might have wanted that. Bacon, goat cheese, potatoes, onions? On a pizza? Yes please.

Instead I got a wonderfully garlic-buttered tuna tomato panini.

Anyway we decided not to sightsee and just fetched the car after that.

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We got it parked in a great spot in the garage—end of a row corner, nothing behind or in front—and over the course of the evening Mark got several suitcases into it, rolled in ones and twos across the street and down the block.

Then we went out for one last drink at a seaside bar, and listened to the roar of the waves. I looked out over the sand, lit by the spillover lights from the patios, and watched the waves break once, twice, three times, reaching foamy fingers into the air. I thought about them breaking like that over and over for hundreds of years, polishing the stones, dragging them out, tossing them up again. And here we were to watch only a few rounds then turn away.

Mark likes to tell a story from a trip to Rome he took without me, where some local he made English small-talk with warned him that he needed to stay away from “the dangerous parts of Rome.” Mark inquired what parts did he mean, and the gentleman leaned in and said, “You see, there are places here where you will pay too much for not very good food .”

I’ll just say, here in Menton we have had no dangerous experiences at all.

Most meals cost less than it would cost us to go out in our home city, and that is even if you correct for the differences regarding tax and tip and even with us drinking more alcohol (since neither has to drive) than we would at home.

Ice cream costs less. Wine costs less. Sodas for the kids maybe cost a little more. Groceries seem to cost less.

And we’ve now eaten at lots of different places, including some you might expect to be dangerous. Bistros right on the sea. Brasseries in sight of the very-photogenic stairs leading up to the basilica. Snack bars, kebab shops, pizzerias, sushi even. It’s all great.

Well, the sushi was about as good as good American sushi, so nothing mind-blowing, just familiar and yummy. And last night Mark had some swordfish that he thought was just okay, but that might just be that he isn’t as into swordfish as he thought.

Anyway. Just another nice and pleasant note.

Today we’re off to Nice early to fetch our rental car, so I have to keep this one short.

What makes a vacation? Are we on vacation every day here, or only on days (like today) when Mark isn’t working and we’re not doing school?

At first I thought it was a half-vacation. Now I think, at least for me, it’s the whole time.

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George Carlin did a bit called “A Place for My Stuff” that I’ve been thinking about (link has both video and readable transcript):

Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation,

And you gotta take some of your stuff with you…

Gotta take about two big suitcases full of stuff, when you go on vacation,

You gotta take a smaller version of your house, It′s the second version of your stuff…

Go read or watch, it’s pretty good.

Anyway, what I was thinking is that one of the things that makes a vacation—at least for me—is that you’ve voluntarily and temporarily left so much stuff behind you.

(Voluntarily and temporarily are both key. We haven’t lost our stuff in a hurricane or fire. We are not refugees. We have not renounced our worldly goods and gone to live as hermits or anchorites. We have not downsized to a retirement home. )

We have a lot of luggage, it feels like, and I won’t know until we see the weather in the mountains next week whether I seriously overpacked or packed just right (because I have a whole set of warm clothes I haven’t touched). We have about one tote bag’s worth of schoolbooks and worksheets. I brought a library book with me which I shouldn’t’ve, because someone reserved it after me and the library wanted it back yesterday. We have ice tools and climbing gear and helmets. Leo has a laptop and Simon an iPad.

But it’s still so much less than the sum of all our stuff.

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I once read somewhere a claim that men and women, in general, have different definitions of “comfort foods.” It probably doesn’t divide quite so neatly between male and female, could well be generationally outdated and has more to do with a dichotomy of personal history. The idea was that (generally speaking) men rattle off favorite comfort foods like pot roast and homemade apple pie, whereas women mention ice cream and packaged snacks.

The difference was supposed to come from what the food represents to you, especially whether it’s something you associate with labor or rest, being cared for or working to take care of others. A pot roast is maybe less comforting if generally you are the one who will have to make it. Ice cream and packaged snacks don’t demand time in the kitchen.

(Important note: This is not any kind of jab at my own husband, who makes the Thanksgiving pot roast every year. And it doesn’t quite work for me, because I find cooking relaxing. But I do grok the importance of associations to emotional content.)

So I wonder the same thing about “I left my stuff behind, so it’s a vacation.” For me I am sure that some of the rest comes from having a break from needing to care for or even think about all the stuff we have.

I am glad to have so many resources! A whole library of books; a pantry full of spices and canned goods; nearly always the right tool for the job. In fact I very much dislike being without a thing I expected to have, and I like a life of comforts and conveniences and the things that keep, or seem to keep, certain troubles at bay.

But I can’t deny that everywhere I look, when I’m at home, I see unfinished labor. This needs tidying, that needs mending, when was the last time I cleaned the…? And can I even find the things I need? And why am I tripping over this object left in the middle of the floor again? And the objects that have vague unsettlements attached… that game I bought the kids that we never play, the unfinished-book pile, the half-done project.

I should ask Mark, who has to go on quite a lot of work trips to not-particularly-exciting towns, whether not having any of his stuff with him feels freeing to him at all, like it does to me, or whether it’s more of a necessary nuisance.

We still have to sweep the floor and do the dishes in this little apartment, but there’s so little stuff in the way that it’s a pleasure.

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Having kids along with you who have particular needs for certain familiar items, sensations, and supports will color it a little bit, I suppose. Some stuff is almost non-negotiable. It’s certainly true when you have very young children, or kids with some types of medical conditions or neurodivergencies. As they grow and get better at self-regulating, at self-management of their medical needs, better at foreseeing and solving problems, better at making do—those are developmental skills—it gets easier to pare down what you carry. And we are getting there!

Still, we made room for a few things, and for some autonomy in prioritizing luggage space. For example, although I planned to buy toiletries and certain personal items over here, I told the boys to identify any familiar brand-name items they felt they needed to bring (Simon chose watermelon-flavored toothpaste, Leo his favorite hair care products—hey, I brought a couple of those too). And we made room and weight-allowance for Leo’s sleeping hammock and a metal-tube-type hammock stand that disassembles and has a carrying case. That’s pretty bulky, but sleeping well has such importance that we never questioned whether to take it along.

These extras only mean that I—who claim to love the paring-down to essentials—need to pare down a little farther. I can do that, to make travel a little less easier on those of us who need a bit more support. The “easier” will ripple out to the rest of us anyway.

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Another thing about the George Carlin bit that I like is his description of trips-within-trips and how you bring less stuff along with you each time, a subset of a subset of a subset:

Aww, no. NOW what do you pack? Right- you gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The fourth version of your house. Only the stuff you know you’re gonna need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, smokes, rubber and change. Well, only the stuff you HOPE you’re gonna need.

It puts me in mind of a matrushka doll, a nested set of boxes, a concentric Venn diagram. What you have, what you might need, what you know you’re gonna need, what you really need.

(Pause, though, to acknowledge that the diagram isn’t concentric for everyone; an acknowledgement that demands a response, gratitude and humility and discomfort and charity.)

Carlin’s bit is meant to be absurd, and it is, but also: it’s a reminder that those of us who live in plenty, so much plenty that it’s a bit of a relief to get away from our possessions once in a while—we can cut back on it. And maybe in some seasons of life it makes sense to lay up a cushion against all the might-happens, but eventually a lot of us—not everyone—will need to leave some of that stuff behind for our own good or someone else’s.

Ultimately we will leave it all behind, so there’s virtue in practicing. In deciding which stuff goes in which box, or circle; in shedding things like a snakeskin, and being bigger on the inside.

Will I remember this when I get home and contemplate my overstuffed bookshelves? Maybe, maybe not. I will let you know, when it happens, whether I am happy to see them again.