“How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you—you leave little bits of your self fluttering on the fences—like rags and shreds of your very life.”
--Katherine Mansfield
The house is almost empty except two garbage bags and a few items to give away. Moving from four bedrooms to 4 rooms takes some adjusting. Understatement.
We looked at an empty house about twelve years ago. As we walked in the living room filled with light. I told Gayle: “This just might be the house.” And she agreed. We moved in December 15th that year. “It’s too late for a Christmas tree.” But my kids said, “You gotta have a Christmas tree.” And so we hauled down from our new attic our seven-foot Christmas tree. And when it was decorated we just stood back, saying little, just “Ah.”
And that was the beginning of a slow but sure love affair with this house.
And so this morning walking trough quiet empty, empty rooms memories swirled. Moving Gayle’s seven-foot grand. Adding shutters to the windows we could afford covering. Putting carpet down those 15 streps so we wouldn’t kill ourselves. Buying a few things but not much. We moved in our stuff. But hopelessly sentimental so many things we brought had a history. And we hung the paintings. Matthew’s art work. Some huge and some small. And Cecile Martin’s work and Carol Tinsley’s and LIz Smith’s and Susan Wooten’s too. We tacked up prints and paintings from trip after trip. And we loved them all.
I took a room upstairs for my office, dragged up heavy book cases and began to fill them up. I had filing cabinets to house my too-many sermons.and there was my computer and big old walnut desk that someone gave me.
We filled the place with furniture from garage sales and consignment and antique stores. And there were two or three TV’s and a great CD player. And a dining room table that could tell a hundred stories.
Outside I tackled the tiny yard around our patio. Ferns and hostas and ajuga and inpatients and begonias. Out back I hauled in good dirt and compost and began to plant. Many things. Roses. Shastas and phlox and so many yellow daisies that my wife kept saying: “Don’t you think you are overdoing it?”
So for twelve years we loved the place. But in my late eighties it seemed a good time to move. From four bed rooms to four rooms. And the sorting out and trying what to decide what to take and not take was overwhelming. But somewhere I learned a lesson as we packed up books and called the Goodwill and filled a zillion black garbage bags. And struggled with what to do with all this dishes my wife loved and so much more. But what I learned was that we semi-hoarders began to realize we did not really didn’t need all those treasurers.
And so the tears ran and there were huge lumps in our throats and we wondered if this was the craziest thing we had ever done. But maybe the weariness of packing and moving helped us know so much of what we thought was important was not really was precious as we remembered.
And so everything is out of the house. We close on the house in two weeks. Thank God it sold. And there are days as we remember grief comes trickling back. But it doesn’t stay.
We’ve done this many times. And every time the leaving behind is hard. But we began time after time to open a new chapter. Every one proved to be different. And we found ourselves doing things differently than before. Looking around at all the emptiness we wonder.
Buechner once told of a wonderful trip his family spent in the mountains. And after several weeks they had to pack and move on. And somebody said, “Why do we ever have to leave this place? Why can’t we just stay.” And Buechner said he learned that they left it all behind to become human beings and discover there would be fine things out there they had yet to know.
And this is where we are. Closing a chapter and opening up with new pages fresh and yet to be filled. In leaving I remember something Dag Hammarskjold once wrote: "For all that has been thanks. For all that is to be yes.” May it be so not just for us but for the people out there whose names and faces we do not know.
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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