Where I Live and Empty Nest Repost #5

Oh...how late I am with this post. Many, many things going on here at Home. I'm finishing up a few, getting a few under control, and moving forward with others........and that makes me feel lighter. More relaxed. I don't like leaving a task or a job undone. Don't like beginning something I'm interested in or excited about without having time to work on it. 

I have to say that I'm the kind of person who enjoys a desk that's cleared off and organized before I begin the day.......so the fact that the main floor of our house will be torn apart......stripped to its bare-nakedness beginning Monday, seems like it should bother me. But there is a plan and I have general outline of what to expect; what to look forward to. I've been given a time frame regarding completion and even though I know that time frame may tend to wander back or forth on the calendar.....it's good to know 'something'. 

Removing everything down to the bones of where we do most of our our daily living has taken time and care and thought and work. After several days of it, I am tired and aching and sore......and thankful to be nearly done. I have stepped on and off chairs in order to reach far back into high places, heaved and stacked boxes, and carried plates and dishes and books from here to there.......a more intense workout than any I've had in quite awhile.

The preparation phase has been hefty with memory as well. In the rifling and sorting, in the keeping and the discarding, the donating and recycling and wrapping for safe-keeping, I've found 27 years of marriage and twenty-five years of children. Eighteen years of life in this structure......in this community. 50-something years of life held in cupboards and drawers and closets and rooms.

In handling each item I've rediscovered moments that shaped and indulgently taken advantage of opportunities to revisit parts of my life that normally I don't on a daily basis: A basket of handwritten notes.  A dainty collection of teacups and saucers. A china lady dressed in gold and white who holds a bouquet of flowers and was a precious gift given to my Mother from my Dad when I was born. (I placed her inside a glass doored bookcase upstairs, rather than risk wrapping her up at all.) There were elementary school lunch pails stashed in a cupboard I rarely open......apparently put there because I wasn't ready to pass them on. Champagne glasses, napkins printed with funny sentiments, Christmas mugs, Mom mugs, Dad mugs, kid mugs. Jars of jam, a snowman tea ball, cookie cutters, cheese knives and cookbooks with notes scrawled by my grown men as young children stuck inside.

This process has been a necessary one. There were certain things that without a doubt were falling apart; in need of repair. It's also been an opportunity......for in the culling and the paring down, we've made conscious choices to hold on to what is important; knowing what outlines and defines our years as separate beings, our years together....... the possibilities of the years ahead. 

Beginning Monday, I will have a comfy place to hang out upstairs.  I'll miss cooking and my kitchen. I'll miss working and writing and sitting at the big table where I watch our back yard......but changing things up a bit is good. It sparks imagination and spurs creativity. It causes one to reflect. It makes one decide and choose and know what is important.

~~~~~

The following is a link to the fifth in my series of reposts about the empty nest. I does me good to go back and read these. Reminds me a little about where I was. What I was thinking or feeling or doing at the point they were written. Where I am now. What I've learned.


Markers

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead!

Warmly, 

Margaret