When you move, all of your stuff is in boxes or buckets or roped together in fragmented bundles, physical pieces of your material soul out there for others to handle and hold.
Perhaps the helpers will think it’s all junk — “They’re taking that?” — or maybe they will drop and break something valuable. At least they will sweat all over everything.
And yet you accept the help, gratefully.
I helped move two different households this weekend: boxes and boxes of books, global fabrics, CD and tape collections up an old wooden stairwell to a small second floor apartment; extra beds, an expandable dining room table (which I helped break), a basket of lots of silverware to a basement apartment with sunset view.
On the helping side there’s another source of gratitude that puts the icing on the helping spirit: knowing that it’s not me moving.