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.