I’ve lived in the same home for the last twenty years. This is the second house I’ve owned, and the one where we raised our kids, held birthday parties and hosted Thanksgivings, decorated a lot of Christmas trees, and navigated a lot of challenges. I know every inch of this house and every sound it makes.
And there has been a lot of love within these walls.
One thing you may not know about me is that I am a hoarder of memories. You know what I mean; refrigerator covered in magnets and photos from every vacation, boxes full of toys and action figures from long-gone childhoods, collections of report cards and drawings filling plastic totes and taking up space in the storage room.
The kids have all moved out, two of them living out of state, and there’s a strong probability that none of them even know that I still have their Power Ranger toys and well-loved VHS tapes – with no VHS player, mind you. I don’t imagine that they remember the dance costumes, prom dresses, graphic t-shirts or art projects that are tucked under the basement stairs.
But I do.
Over the last month, my husband has accepted a new, exciting job. We have made the decision to move to a new city, and have started the process of thinning out twenty years of love and life as we prepare to sell our home. We’re cleaning out closets and emptying shelves, unearthing long-forgotten memories along with the dust.
I’m really not very good at this.
You’re supposed to make three piles: keep, donate, toss. And I start out just fine each day, determined and motivated and with a cutthroat attitude. For about ten minutes. Then I come across something that triggers a memory, that fills my heart or brings tears to my eyes and suddenly the ‘keep’ pile is growing exponentionally.
Honestly, things are going better than anticipated. It seems that I’ve managed to kind of detach myself from the goings-on and have been rather productive. Granted, we are only in the house staging phase of this transition, but everything should be moving forward quickly.
When we make a decision, we do not dilly-dally.
This is all exciting and terrifying, but I’m truly looking forward to a new adventure. I’ve never been a particularly daring person; I’ll leave that to my book characters. At <mumble mumble> years old, there’s a kind of freedom in taking a chance and being a little bold.