I’ve mentioned before, my life lately is all about the cutting away.
I spent the weekend getting rid of stuff. If you haven’t been following along, we have to clear out the house by August 13. Next Thursday, for the calendar-challenged among you. Yes, we have time. But I can tell you, this particular stone has accumulated a serious amount of moss over the past 21 years. In an arid climate, too.
My moves before this were either as a young woman who owned practically nothing (18-22) or within the same small town over a few blocks. I’ve lived a lot of places within Laramie, but only two in the last 16 years.
When David and I moved out of the (much smaller) house we’d shared for 11 years, it went okay until we hit the basement. Time slowed as we dug out the sedimentary layers of toys and obsolete computer parts. Things we’d moved into the house and never used were in the far back corners, whispering quietly to themselves in the dank dark.
In this house, it’s the attic.
My (wonderful) Aunt Karen drove up from Montrose, Colo. (read: a long way) to help for two days and drive home again. She felt like she didn’t make much of a dent, but she helped me clear the attic spaces. Even though she had to ask for a flashlight to get back into the dark, “scary parts.” Dark, scary parts filled with decades of obnoxious roofing dust from when they ripped off the roof last fall to replace it. Second only in sinus-yuck factor to coal dust from when David and I remodeled the old coal bin in the previous house. Blew black snot for days. Looking into the blackened tissues, I thought of my Kennedy grandfather who died of black lung.
The attic is now clear. I rid myself of a thirty-year collection of fabric. I know. It’s a disease. I even had fabric I took from my other aunt when she had to build a separate shed to house HER fabric collection. You’d think it would have been a cautionary tale. No no no.
But I’m free now.
Gone is the sewing machine and all the fabric. No more quilting until I’m making a living as a writer. Tobiah’s baby quilt was the last, which is somehow fitting.
Gone are the Breyer model horses I’ve saved from childhood. Into the arms of a little girl in a sparkly purple body suit, who spun around and carried the box back to her mother’s Suburban, where her brothers impatiently waited.
I’m good with that. Gone also are the old bean bag chairs, the boom box with tape-to-tape record, the four-drawer filing cabinet and the boxes of overhead transparencies. All via Freecycle. I love Freecycle. You send an email to the loop with an offer and people respond. They come and take it away with happy smiles.
One of my friends who left Laramie a year ago asked how I’m managing the good-byes, since we completely blew having a going-away party. She did it well, arranging carefully sequenced farewell drinks and meals.
No such grace from me.
I’m using the serendipity method. Which is a nice way of saying I’m not arranging it at all. People have stopped by, knowing we’re packing. With all the fraught-ness that word entails. Ann offered to bring us sandwiches, which was one of the nicest things anyone could offer.
And I’m meeting the new arrivals in Laramie. The ones who are moving in for the new semester and love to have our ratty old sunroom couch. The girls from Texas, filling up their five-room house in Tie Siding with Freecycle finds while their boyfriends go to school at Wyo Tech. After that, they’ll go back to Texas, they assure us. We don’t know what they’ll do with all the stuff. And the mother of the little girl in the sparkly purple top, who asked me where to buy plants that would thrive so well in Laramie.
Blessings and good fortune in this little town to them all.