Emptying

Slowly, we began to empty out our house.  Furniture was sold or given away.  I discovered that I did not need a wardrobe with so many drawers; my small oak bureau with the mirror was sufficient.  That’s part of downsizing:  what is sufficient? 

A surprising benefit of downsizing was discovering things that I had forgotten I owned.  In sorting through dozens of T-shirts, mostly from the 220 races I have run since 1993, I discovered some that I had forgotten about.  Martha found two lovely little miniature books of Hiroshige prints and poetry and couldn’t remember where they came from.  Even in our relatively small house, we had so many possessions that we had forgotten what we already had.  That sentence alone is a good reason to downsize, to simplify, to get back to what is truly important.

We had a lot of hard work to do before we put our house on the market.  The wainscoting in the master bedroom, which we had discontinued last fall, suddenly became a priority again.  We decided to take the breakfast bar in the kitchen with us (just right for two people but probably an inconvenience for a buyer who would want a larger kitchen table), and so we removed it and replaced the wainscoting there. 

I sold almost all of my tools, and wondered what to do with my Body Solid exercise machine in the basement, when at the last moment my friend Gil contacted me because he had seen it on Facebook, where Martha had listed dozens of things for sale (and generated thousands of dollars in profits).  I used to work out with Gil years ago in the gym in Highlands, and was glad to sell it to him for a song, provided he dismantle it himself, which he did (I helped carry some of  the weights up to his truck). 

We wrangled so many pieces of furniture down those stairs, maneuvering around the landing, that I lost count.  With the help of Martha’s brother Scott, with his pickup truck and trailer and (most importantly) his willingness to help, we began transporting the furniture and belongings that we really wanted up to our new home, which was only five miles away.  Some of our things, mostly books and décor and winter clothes, went to a storage warehouse a mile out of Town, to be sorted through at a later time.  And finally, on the very last day of May, a Sunday, two men showed up with a big trailer and moved out the heaviest and most unwieldy things, like the piano and the big oak buffet table and the bed.  How strange it was, to walk through our empty living-dining room with the high cathedral ceilings, and hear our voices echoing through the emptiness. 

Our first night in our new home in Highlands was May 31, and it coincided with a full moon. 

In the fullness of time,
in the fullness of the moon,
we came to a new place,
a new beginning. 

Downsizing

We are ready for downsizing, for simplifying our lives, I said in my last post.  By some standards, our home in Clear Creek would already be considered a modest one.  But as I said, we have grown accustomed to spending winters in a condo at Atlantic Beach, and the smaller size suits us well.  I wrote a poem about downsizing in my first book, Bells in the Night, which was based in part on our friend Barbara moving into a smaller space.

It reminded me of Barbara, who wanted less and less,
Who gave away everything these past few years,
Quietly and without a fuss, starting at the attic
And moving downward floor by floor, leaving

A gentle trail of broom-swept emptiness behind;
First her knitting, then her china; boxes and boxes
Of photographs of Italy, friends who were gone,
And finally – most difficult of all – her books.

But giving up comes easier with use, like any skill;
The rooms seemed to empty themselves, one by one;
Sunlight streamed into the curtainless house
And the floorboards gleamed brightly with loss.

We have lived in smaller spaces for days and even weeks at a time, both at Atlantic Beach and when traveling in France and Italy.  In 2024, we rented a small apartment called Studio Michelangelo in Florence, right around the corner from the Duomo, and it was lovely.  How much space does a person really need, after all?  I am not prepared to sell everything and live in a Winnebago as one of my friends did several years ago.  But lately it seems that we are happier with less:  fewer possession, fewer commitments, less property to maintain.  More time for the things that matter.  I told one of my friends recently that I really didn’t need that much:  a desk, a reading chair, a piano.

Downsizing.  Giving up comes easier with use, like any skill.  So in April we began giving things away, selling things, donating things.  Our daughter in Greenville, who has a big house, gladly accepted some of it, like the rocking chair that my grandmother once rocked my Dad in when he was a baby. 

Our daughter also inherited all of my dahlia bulbs, some of them given to me by Martha for my birthday years ago, others given to me by Barbara James, grown by her husband Herb with whom I worked at the Town for years (and I never knew he grew dahlias!), which in turn were given to him by his mother, and perhaps her mother.  Dahlia bulbs can be passed down through many generations.  Now I receive "Dahlia Dispatch" updates on the bulbs, which like us have been transplanted but are sprouting anew in a new environment.

 
We  found that the more we gave away, the lighter we felt, the more liberated.  And the “things” went to friends and relatives, like the blue birdbath we sold to Lisa and the garden bench to Karen.  It was like giving away puppies:  we enjoyed knowing that they went to good homes.  In the end, it is the memories that we keep, and they mean more than the possessions that we accumulate over a lifetime. 

A New Chapter

Two months have gone by since my last post to this blog on March 16.  We returned to our home that we designed and built 43 years ago on Sassafras Gap Road.  The power and water were on this year, unlike in the past, but it was very cold, with temperatures in the twenties and formidable wind chills.  It was good to return to the beautiful home that we expanded and improved over the years, to the comfort of the familiar.  

As much as we love this home, for several years now we have considered moving closer to downtown Highlands.  Martha’s aunt Anne owned a condominium at Highlands Townsite until recently, and stayed there during the summers until she moved to an independent living and then an assisted living retirement home in Clemson, South Carolina.  We enjoyed many wonderful hours on her front porch, sipping wine and visiting, enjoying hearing all of the stories about her travels and her friends.  It was “Anne Central,” and in the late afternoons all of her neighbors would drop by with drinks and snacks.  The location was perfect for her, on Horse Cove Road, which is really an extension of Main Street and is the quietest road to Town.  Her grandchildren sold the place two years ago, in part to help pay for the cost of her assisted living, and that made us wonder if we had missed an opportunity to move to Highlands.  Condominiums are the only affordable options anymore, but they rarely come on the market, and especially at Highlands Townsite where most of the owners are second-generation, retired second-home owners.  Wouldn’t this have been a smart move for us?  We are ready for downsizing, for simplifying our lives, and the chores of weed-eating and maintaining a one-acre property had become a distraction from the pursuits that we enjoyed.  Staying in a condo at the beach for ten years had made us realize that we were happy with less.

In March, while we were still in Atlantic Beach, Martha learned that a unit in the building had become available, downstairs but at the opposite end where Anne’s had been.  We always do a lot of thinking and planning while we are on our “Sabbatical.”  In the past we have planned trips to Italy and France and month-long road trips out west in our Mini Cooper.  As we thought about it, it seemed to be an opportunity that we could not ignore, an open door through which a new chapter in our lives might begin.  Martha had wanted to move to Highlands for a year or two, while I was not quite ready.  But I agreed to look at the condominium with an open mind when we returned to Highlands, which we did within a week.  When we walked inside, I admit that I was pleasantly surprised.  Anne’s unit, though filled with her beautiful artwork and treasured belongings, had always seemed antiquated and dark.  This place was filled with light.  New flooring had been installed, along with a modern HVAC system.  I could see ourselves living there.
 

So, by the middle of March, and not without a lot of soul-searching and weighing of the pros and cons, we had decided to buy a new home.  A home in Highlands, on property once owned by Martha’s ancestors, in the Town which I served for 26 years, on the corner of Horse Cove Road and Sixth Street, which I have run past for four decades – in fact, it was on our regular daily running route.  We decided to list our home of 43 years on the real estate market as soon as we could – the target date was June 1, which gave us only a little over two months to take this leap of faith into the future, this new chapter, this adventure.