The home-textile adventure was still just a light warm-up compared to furnishing an entire apartment with flat-pack furniture.

Start teaching your kids how to build LEGO sets now.

Edó was forward-thinking. She and Milán spent hours building LEGO together. I didn’t. Later, this became painfully obvious in my furniture assembly skills.

If you move around a lot and don’t want to live among other people’s discarded, worn-out, collapsed furniture — and Edó definitely didn’t — then you quickly learn not to dream about designer furniture. You settle for high-quality modular systems that can be assembled on-site.

And the price has to be calculated carefully. Cheap enough that you can leave everything behind at any moment, or practically give it away for the price of clearing out the apartment.

New beds, mattresses, couches, armchairs, wardrobes, dressers, shelves, dining tables.

You cannot get emotionally attached to these things.

At the next place, a new version will come.

What you never give up are your clothes, your electronics, your personal belongings. And even those alone can fill a three-ton moving van.

Boxes, bags, suitcases, washer and dryer, giant TVs. Those arrive first, basically together with us.

But without wardrobes, there’s nowhere to unpack anything. That temporary phase — stepping around boxes everywhere — is the worst part.

Same store as the day before with the home textiles. Edó had already planned where everything would go. Notes, measurements, sketches, ideas.

We just pushed the cart behind her.

In the warehouse we moved quickly using product codes. Boxes onto the cart, payment, delivery department.

“Well, that was easy,” I thought with relief. “This is going to be child’s play.”

The shipment arrived the next day.

Flat but unbelievably heavy cardboard boxes everywhere.

“Where the hell am I supposed to put all this?” I looked around in complete despair.

When I was younger, I could somehow still assemble furniture. Most likely because I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of Edó. Later, that stopped mattering. I had embarrassed myself in so many different ways in life that this barely registered anymore.

It practically became my natural state.

“Edó, call Milán. I’m not capable of this. I’ll cook goulash soup for you guys or whatever you want. I’ll clean and iron for a year, I swear. Just not this.”

“Sure you will,” she said, with that mischievous little smile already appearing at the corner of her mouth.

No matter where Milán lived or what business trip he was on, when Edó called, he immediately came to assemble furniture.

The two “LEGO masters” read the instructions and prepared the parts, screws, and every tiny little piece of nonsense as if they had trained for this their entire lives.

They moved at light speed.

Meanwhile, to at least look useful beyond cooking, I shredded cardboard boxes and stuffed them into garbage bags.

By evening, everything was finished.

And that was one of Edó’s special gifts.

We saw boxes, screws, and chaos.

She already saw the home inside them.