Anchors Aweigh
By Diann Wilson

I’d imagined my dream retirement would involve sleeping in, sipping lattes, reading books, and taking long walks. Instead, I found myself collecting boxes from the grocery store, making lists, and frantically pulling out my stack of moving company business cards.
I had no one to blame but myself—and of course, my husband. A mere three weeks before my last day of work, Steve and I went on vacation and decided we should move to Hawaii.
We had always been migratory souls—thus the stack of moving company business cards. Over the years, we had voluntarily relocated fifteen times. This could cause one to assume we had reduced our belongings to only the bare necessities. However, we were as proficient at getting rid of things as we were at replacing them with alternative things.
In addition to furniture, books and knickknacks, we had also acquired three cats. After four phone calls and as many veterinarian visits, we confirmed that we could indeed move our cats with us to Hawaii, but not for 120 days—unless we were willing to have them locked in a facility that sounded like a pet prison, where we would have limited visiting hours and an hour-long drive to see them.
Our cats already didn’t like us moving so much, so we decided to forgo pet prison, and delay our move for 122 days. We added two extra days just in case anything went wrong. Thankfully, the examinations, shots, blood work and form submissions all proceeded on schedule. Our local vet was clearly not going to be sad to lose us as pet parents, as I both called and dropped by her office weekly to make sure everything was going according to our schedule.
With the cat situation under control, we began scrutinizing our possessions to determine what we could get rid of (so we could replace it in Hawai`i). And that’s when I paused. We normally called Two Men and a Truck, or Three Starving Students and at least one United Van Lines sort of company for bids. But this was a big move and two men, three students or maybe even United, would not be able to drive a moving van across the ocean. Actually, I had never considered how people got their belongings to an island.
I needed to regroup. I Googled “Hawai`i moves”. Not surprisingly, we weren’t the first people to relocate across the ocean. I quickly learned that the experience could be harrowing or at least complicated. Dozens of people had blogged about their experiences. I devoured their advice.
After studying multiple websites and making numerous calls, I concluded that there were really only two establishments that shipped people’s household goods to Hawai`i. While there are dozens of companies you can contract with, they all use one of these two firms. So, I read reviews, checked Better Business Bureau ratings, and settled on two moving companies to give us proposals. We already knew approximately how much a move would cost, or at least we thought we did. I soon learned that a ship gets way worse gas mileage than a moving van, and also moves a lot more slowly, so we were going to have to pay quite a bit more and wait quite a bit longer for our belongings to arrive.
We quickly reminded ourselves that it was a small price to pay to move to paradise and proceeded to pare down our worldly goods. I made consignment store runs, held garage sales, donated to Goodwill, advertised furniture sales to my work colleagues, and was feeling quite accomplished until Steve calculated that I had earned about $6 an hour doing all of the paring down. At least we had less things to pack.
On day 116, the moving truck towing our shipping container was scheduled to arrive. At the appointed time, we got a phone call. “Do you live at the top of a steep hill?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“Not at the top of the hill, but about half way up”, I replied. The movers were at the base of our hill, just three blocks down, and their truck didn’t have the power necessary to pull the heavy container up the street to our house.
This wasn’t part of our plan. We had sold the house and needed to get out. We had bought a new house in Hawai`i and were flying there in five days. We needed our stuff moved - now. Their suggestion? That we put our belongings in our truck (we didn’t own a truck) and shuttle our things down the hill to where the container was currently parked. They would then transfer our belongings from the truck that we didn’t own, into the shipping container.
I briefly considered how much the trunk of my two-seat convertible could hold, and wisely offered an alternative. There was a route they could take from where they were parked, that would lead to a less steep hill, which would lead to another smallish incline, which would bring them to the uphill part of our street. From there, they would be able to reach us using a downhill path.
How this idea had escaped them was quite puzzling and extremely disconcerting. This is what they did for a living. Nonetheless. twenty minutes later, the container pulled up in front of the house.
With excitement, I ran to the front door. I was anticipating a shipping container the size of a large, doublewide mobile home. What appeared, however, was something more like the size of a single porta-potty lying on its side.
We had sold, donated, given away, and disposed of all of our non-essential items. We had spent three months paring down our belongings to only items that were essential for island living. I had measured and re-measured while Steve had followed suit, calculating and computing—using some sort of cubic formula to ensure we would have enough room for what we needed to send to the island. It was a great plan, or so we thought.
Three movers peeled themselves out of the cab of the truck. The big one strode forward and extended his hand. “I’m Tiny”. At 6’2” and about 250 pounds, there was nothing tiny about him. Of course, he was followed by a scrawny kid who identified himself as Taco. Taco didn’t appear old enough to be working, and definitely not strong enough to lift our more ample boxes. I panicked. But then Slim stepped forward. Like Goldilocks—he was not too small and not too big—just the right size.
“Before you start, we apparently didn’t do a good job of calculating what would fit into a 20-foot shipping container,” I said. “Could you take a quick look at what we have left here, and let us know how much we will have to leave behind?”
They charged an hourly rate and I did not want to pay them to stand around while I decided what could stay and what could go. Tiny strode through the house glancing right and left. “It’ll all fit” he barked.
“No way!” I exclaimed.
“This is not our first rodeo” he replied.
I still didn’t believe it. I didn’t want them to randomly jam items in the container only for us to end up with a box spring but no mattress. What if we arrived in Hawai`i with dishes but no silverware? My mind was racing, and my eyes darted back and forth perusing our belongings. For sure Steve did not need to take his golf book collection with him. I casually prodded that box with my toe, hoping he wouldn’t notice that I nudged it into the newly formed, Only-if-there-is-room-in-the-container, pile.
And seriously, did he really need two sets of golf clubs? Surely his golfing friends could bring their own clubs when they came to visit. He again wasn’t looking, so I quickly picked them up and stashed them in the hall closet. Say, this wasn’t so difficult after all. What other of Steve’s things could be left behind?
By now the movers were in high gear. Furniture, boxes and appliances were being carried or dollied out of the house and down the front sidewalk faster than I could have imagined.
I wanted them to slow down so I could make sure they were taking the most important items first, but my practical, frugal side, which was the one paying by the hour, was saying, “go, go!” From experience, I knew they would slow down as the day wore on, so why not let them stay in high gear as long as possible?
The living room cleared out, followed by the kitchen, bedrooms and bath. They finally made it out to the patio and appeared ready to collect more items to put in the container. But...this was our patio furniture! Patio furniture isn’t small. There were two lounge chairs, a table with four chairs, and a grill. I started imagining us living in Hawai`i, where it is always gorgeous outside. We would have a lovely patio, but would be sitting on lava rocks and eating only uncooked food as our grill would have been left behind.
Could I ask the movers to take off one of those first couple of boxes they placed in the container, so we would have room for our grill? Was the box of extra soap, lotion and toilet paper really so important to take with us (curse you Costco)? As I was preparing to ask them to make some substitutions, the movers wheeled the patio furniture to the front of the house. They paused. Here it comes, I thought—this is the moment of truth. This was the, “we don’t have any more room, what do you want us to do?” moment.
But instead, they loaded the items, and Tiny turned and said, “There’s leftover space. Ya’ got anything else?”
I realized I had been holding my breath, and I finally let it go. I ran to the street and peeked into the container. Sure enough, there, on top, was a space about one foot high by two feet wide and 6 feet deep. I ran back into the house and quickly grabbed the extra golf clubs from the closet. Before Steve knew what happened, I was running out front with them, shouting, “Hey, I think you forgot these.”
As the truck pulled away from the curb and headed downhill, I snapped a picture of all of our earthly goods being towed away in a small, rusty metal container. I realized I needed some proof that we once had things, just in case the boat sank.
We returned to the house to let our cats out of the bathroom where we had sequestered them. I looked at the scraps of paper, packing tape, and dust balls that littered our hardwood floors. I went to the pantry to grab a broom. Oops—it was packed!
I had no one to blame but myself—and of course, my husband. A mere three weeks before my last day of work, Steve and I went on vacation and decided we should move to Hawaii.
We had always been migratory souls—thus the stack of moving company business cards. Over the years, we had voluntarily relocated fifteen times. This could cause one to assume we had reduced our belongings to only the bare necessities. However, we were as proficient at getting rid of things as we were at replacing them with alternative things.
In addition to furniture, books and knickknacks, we had also acquired three cats. After four phone calls and as many veterinarian visits, we confirmed that we could indeed move our cats with us to Hawaii, but not for 120 days—unless we were willing to have them locked in a facility that sounded like a pet prison, where we would have limited visiting hours and an hour-long drive to see them.
Our cats already didn’t like us moving so much, so we decided to forgo pet prison, and delay our move for 122 days. We added two extra days just in case anything went wrong. Thankfully, the examinations, shots, blood work and form submissions all proceeded on schedule. Our local vet was clearly not going to be sad to lose us as pet parents, as I both called and dropped by her office weekly to make sure everything was going according to our schedule.
With the cat situation under control, we began scrutinizing our possessions to determine what we could get rid of (so we could replace it in Hawai`i). And that’s when I paused. We normally called Two Men and a Truck, or Three Starving Students and at least one United Van Lines sort of company for bids. But this was a big move and two men, three students or maybe even United, would not be able to drive a moving van across the ocean. Actually, I had never considered how people got their belongings to an island.
I needed to regroup. I Googled “Hawai`i moves”. Not surprisingly, we weren’t the first people to relocate across the ocean. I quickly learned that the experience could be harrowing or at least complicated. Dozens of people had blogged about their experiences. I devoured their advice.
After studying multiple websites and making numerous calls, I concluded that there were really only two establishments that shipped people’s household goods to Hawai`i. While there are dozens of companies you can contract with, they all use one of these two firms. So, I read reviews, checked Better Business Bureau ratings, and settled on two moving companies to give us proposals. We already knew approximately how much a move would cost, or at least we thought we did. I soon learned that a ship gets way worse gas mileage than a moving van, and also moves a lot more slowly, so we were going to have to pay quite a bit more and wait quite a bit longer for our belongings to arrive.
We quickly reminded ourselves that it was a small price to pay to move to paradise and proceeded to pare down our worldly goods. I made consignment store runs, held garage sales, donated to Goodwill, advertised furniture sales to my work colleagues, and was feeling quite accomplished until Steve calculated that I had earned about $6 an hour doing all of the paring down. At least we had less things to pack.
On day 116, the moving truck towing our shipping container was scheduled to arrive. At the appointed time, we got a phone call. “Do you live at the top of a steep hill?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“Not at the top of the hill, but about half way up”, I replied. The movers were at the base of our hill, just three blocks down, and their truck didn’t have the power necessary to pull the heavy container up the street to our house.
This wasn’t part of our plan. We had sold the house and needed to get out. We had bought a new house in Hawai`i and were flying there in five days. We needed our stuff moved - now. Their suggestion? That we put our belongings in our truck (we didn’t own a truck) and shuttle our things down the hill to where the container was currently parked. They would then transfer our belongings from the truck that we didn’t own, into the shipping container.
I briefly considered how much the trunk of my two-seat convertible could hold, and wisely offered an alternative. There was a route they could take from where they were parked, that would lead to a less steep hill, which would lead to another smallish incline, which would bring them to the uphill part of our street. From there, they would be able to reach us using a downhill path.
How this idea had escaped them was quite puzzling and extremely disconcerting. This is what they did for a living. Nonetheless. twenty minutes later, the container pulled up in front of the house.
With excitement, I ran to the front door. I was anticipating a shipping container the size of a large, doublewide mobile home. What appeared, however, was something more like the size of a single porta-potty lying on its side.
We had sold, donated, given away, and disposed of all of our non-essential items. We had spent three months paring down our belongings to only items that were essential for island living. I had measured and re-measured while Steve had followed suit, calculating and computing—using some sort of cubic formula to ensure we would have enough room for what we needed to send to the island. It was a great plan, or so we thought.
Three movers peeled themselves out of the cab of the truck. The big one strode forward and extended his hand. “I’m Tiny”. At 6’2” and about 250 pounds, there was nothing tiny about him. Of course, he was followed by a scrawny kid who identified himself as Taco. Taco didn’t appear old enough to be working, and definitely not strong enough to lift our more ample boxes. I panicked. But then Slim stepped forward. Like Goldilocks—he was not too small and not too big—just the right size.
“Before you start, we apparently didn’t do a good job of calculating what would fit into a 20-foot shipping container,” I said. “Could you take a quick look at what we have left here, and let us know how much we will have to leave behind?”
They charged an hourly rate and I did not want to pay them to stand around while I decided what could stay and what could go. Tiny strode through the house glancing right and left. “It’ll all fit” he barked.
“No way!” I exclaimed.
“This is not our first rodeo” he replied.
I still didn’t believe it. I didn’t want them to randomly jam items in the container only for us to end up with a box spring but no mattress. What if we arrived in Hawai`i with dishes but no silverware? My mind was racing, and my eyes darted back and forth perusing our belongings. For sure Steve did not need to take his golf book collection with him. I casually prodded that box with my toe, hoping he wouldn’t notice that I nudged it into the newly formed, Only-if-there-is-room-in-the-container, pile.
And seriously, did he really need two sets of golf clubs? Surely his golfing friends could bring their own clubs when they came to visit. He again wasn’t looking, so I quickly picked them up and stashed them in the hall closet. Say, this wasn’t so difficult after all. What other of Steve’s things could be left behind?
By now the movers were in high gear. Furniture, boxes and appliances were being carried or dollied out of the house and down the front sidewalk faster than I could have imagined.
I wanted them to slow down so I could make sure they were taking the most important items first, but my practical, frugal side, which was the one paying by the hour, was saying, “go, go!” From experience, I knew they would slow down as the day wore on, so why not let them stay in high gear as long as possible?
The living room cleared out, followed by the kitchen, bedrooms and bath. They finally made it out to the patio and appeared ready to collect more items to put in the container. But...this was our patio furniture! Patio furniture isn’t small. There were two lounge chairs, a table with four chairs, and a grill. I started imagining us living in Hawai`i, where it is always gorgeous outside. We would have a lovely patio, but would be sitting on lava rocks and eating only uncooked food as our grill would have been left behind.
Could I ask the movers to take off one of those first couple of boxes they placed in the container, so we would have room for our grill? Was the box of extra soap, lotion and toilet paper really so important to take with us (curse you Costco)? As I was preparing to ask them to make some substitutions, the movers wheeled the patio furniture to the front of the house. They paused. Here it comes, I thought—this is the moment of truth. This was the, “we don’t have any more room, what do you want us to do?” moment.
But instead, they loaded the items, and Tiny turned and said, “There’s leftover space. Ya’ got anything else?”
I realized I had been holding my breath, and I finally let it go. I ran to the street and peeked into the container. Sure enough, there, on top, was a space about one foot high by two feet wide and 6 feet deep. I ran back into the house and quickly grabbed the extra golf clubs from the closet. Before Steve knew what happened, I was running out front with them, shouting, “Hey, I think you forgot these.”
As the truck pulled away from the curb and headed downhill, I snapped a picture of all of our earthly goods being towed away in a small, rusty metal container. I realized I needed some proof that we once had things, just in case the boat sank.
We returned to the house to let our cats out of the bathroom where we had sequestered them. I looked at the scraps of paper, packing tape, and dust balls that littered our hardwood floors. I went to the pantry to grab a broom. Oops—it was packed!
DIANN WILSON. Diann grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which Johnny Carson once called the buttonhole capital of the world. She subsequently lived and worked in Oklahoma, Arizona, Minnesota and California—note her fondness for states ending with the letter A.
Following a career in higher education and corporate training, she travelled to Hawai'i to celebrate her retirement. Little did she suspect that her husband would break his rib which would result in them buying property in the countryside and becoming nut farmers.
She quickly discovered that life in paradise was not all lounging at the beach and golfing. Feral pigs, farm stand thieves and a distinct worker ethic revolving around surf conditions, both challenged and amused her. It was time to form a fondness for a state ending with the letter I.
She has found great joy and humor in her transition and writes about her experiences in her blog and through a variety of short stories under the working title, Goodbye Big City, Hello Big Island. She is also the co-author of The Other Blended Learning: A Classroom Centered Approach.
Wilson lives happily on a farm in North Kohala with her husband, two cats, a dog and six chickens.
Following a career in higher education and corporate training, she travelled to Hawai'i to celebrate her retirement. Little did she suspect that her husband would break his rib which would result in them buying property in the countryside and becoming nut farmers.
She quickly discovered that life in paradise was not all lounging at the beach and golfing. Feral pigs, farm stand thieves and a distinct worker ethic revolving around surf conditions, both challenged and amused her. It was time to form a fondness for a state ending with the letter I.
She has found great joy and humor in her transition and writes about her experiences in her blog and through a variety of short stories under the working title, Goodbye Big City, Hello Big Island. She is also the co-author of The Other Blended Learning: A Classroom Centered Approach.
Wilson lives happily on a farm in North Kohala with her husband, two cats, a dog and six chickens.