The stresses & strains of moving home, along with, from recall, a precious few others including but not limited to Death, Changing Jobs, Divorce or Marriage, Serious Life-Threatening Illness........yes, there are more but I forget them.....all of these are major stressors taking the most valuable of time off the end of our lives.....or so it is said.
Being ever the optimist, I am hopeful that, instead of this, the truth lies more along the lines of 'What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger' - I must believe in this latter one, or I'm a dead man several years ago - ergo it must be so, problem solved QED.
However, married, as I am, to a beautiful Chinese woman, and having a beautiful mid-teens daughter, both of whom 'enjoy' clothing, it's very hard to get them into 'cull mode', that mode we all should enter but seldom do, as deeply as we should, when we relocate. With the daughter especially, she has so many clothes, many of them, granted, that have been 'gifted' from cousins, and most of them high-quality goods - the sheer quantity of them is staggering. And the pairs of shoes.......Mon Dieu.....brand-name shoes that any teenager would die to have & wear - all of them have uber-high mileage, but none gained through actual wear, but that combo of frequent flyer miles within their boxes......I'm sure I'm not alone, but man, it feels that way as I fight yet another losing battle.
We have already dragged said shoes & clothing from the depths of Northern China, around Melbourne and so-on, only to have it all reside within wardrobes or drawers, never seeing the light of day, and for me, further proof is not required of it's necessity or value, ie it's lack thereof.
No......It has managed to be display goods for some 4 years now, and hidden-away display goods at that, and enough is enough.
If only it were all that easy.........in the end, they will do what they will, these women, and once again, we will transport - this time at many hundreds of dollars cost, I should add - items of clothing that will go-on to live-out their lives in cupboards & drawers.........now in Totally Tropically Style.
Of course, being a guy, and more yet, not exactly a 'clothes horse' of any kind, having that most functional of kits, 4 good pairs of jeans, perhaps 4 pairs of shoes, (2 pairs of which are Birkenstock Sandals!) and maybe a dozen T shirts, well, that's about it, underwear & socks aside - oh, I almost forgot my suit and 2 jackets....and that really IS it.
My wife keeps showing me attractive yet very heavy knitted items of hers, saying 'do you think this one will be ok for up there', and having that look of both disappointment and disbelief when I remind her of the true meaning of The Tropical North, where even the cold is warm. Sure, it can get a little less mild-weathered in the depths of Winter, with temperatures sometimes dropping to a dreadful 8 degrees C.....in the midle of the night for a few minutes on a very bad and unusual day.......of yes, I can see that they'll be in for more than a few shocks on this and other levels - I'll have the camera nice & ready!
So yes, I am suffering that kind of stress where my family seem unable to let-go in an appropriate manner befitting a 3000Km-plus relocation - and I have decided to simply let it go, and watch upon arrival, as we either over-stuff built-in robes with clothing never to be worn, or as they throw-out perfectly useless, but now outrageously expensive items, their value having quadrupled due to the cost of freighting them the full length of Australia's Eastern Seaboard.
Or am I being unreasonable here?
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