Moving in with somebody and finding doubles
There you are, your congregations of tawny boxes lined against a barren wall. Each box varies in size, some snaffled from supermarkets, some issued by the removal company, some from the last time either of you moved. Many bow underneath heavier items, boxes with marker-pen declarations of ‘kitchen stuff’ caving into those branded ‘towels’. Amalgamation is underway. Tin openers, toothbrush holders and washing baskets are becoming one.
When the move is complete, the door slams shut with an echoed clatter and leaves you to your mixed feelings of giddiness and terror. You slide down the wall before resting on scuffed floorboards and dusty skirting boards. An hour later, takeaway food and booze have drawn a warm veil around you. Life is fuzzy and exhilarating and bonny enough for finding music and unpacking books from boxes.
Beneath the glee there is nervousness to this process, and questions of dense matter. It may be the first time either of you has formally moved in with someone you aren’t related to. Frictions lurk in shoe cupboards and sock drawers. Since books were perhaps one of the things which drew you together in the first place, introducing your collections to one another means trepidation. This is probably as close as you’ll get to creating a stepfamily. How will his disturbingly comprehensive collection of railway books get on with your complete works of Thomas Hardy? Should both stocks be intermingled, or their separate identities preserved, with the added bonus of a clean, easy break should the worst happen?
The signs for your relationship are good, though, if a merger feels right. All boxes are thrown open. One by one, novels 20 centimetres high and biographies three inches fat leave their temporary shanty town in a procession. They are grouped together – his novels and yours, your non-fiction and his – and then shelved with the kind of intricacy that turns a Thursday dusk into a Friday dawn. Wonderfully, every half hour or so, one of you may exclaim ‘match!’, ‘doubler!’ or ‘I’ve got this too!’ Many you already knew of – there is just something more tangible and meaningful now these matches have met – and many you didn’t. In these brief moments of pairing, it feels as though droplets of a tidy future are falling around you. Your new flat alters rapidly from carcass to cradle. All will be well and rosy.