One Small Bookshelf, Allegedly

May thirtieth. The text said 'light, it's basically just shelves.' I want to be clear that this is not what a bookshelf is. A bookshelf is wood. Wood has weight. This particular bookshelf was a full-height unit with a solid back panel and what I can only describe as the spiritual density of a piece of furniture that has been in the same spot for a decade and developed opinions about staying there.

I said yes immediately, obviously. That's the thing, I didn't even pause. Someone I know needed help moving it to the new place a few floors up, it was a Saturday, I was free, I had eaten lunch. All reasonable conditions for showing up. What I had failed to account for was the stairwell. No elevator. Three flights. One corner that the bookshelf fit around only in the theoretical sense, the way that certain things are technically possible but require a level of cooperation from geometry that geometry is not always willing to give.

the bookshelf's winning, for those keeping score

At some point I sat down on the top step while we waited to recalibrate and I thought about the community center's foraging walk last spring, the one where the whole point was learning to read what was actually there rather than what you expected to find. A bookshelf is 'light' the same way that sometimes a thing you're carrying is lighter than you thought, until the moment it isn't, and then you know its actual weight. We got it in. We did. The bookshelf is now against the wall in its new room and I assume it will never move again in either of our lifetimes.

the face of someone who said 'of course, happy to help'

Hands feel fine, for the record. I made pasta for dinner, which felt earned. There's a certain satisfaction to a day where you used your actual body to help move an actual thing, even if that thing turned out to be considerably less 'light' than advertised. I'd do it again. Probably. Just maybe with better socks next time, the ankle boots were a choice I made with confidence and now have mild regrets about.