Thursday, May 31, 2012

Much Ado About Something


Letting go of things can be difficult.  We amass in our early years - going it alone, setting up house, complicating things with children (wonderful), friends (so much fun), accoutrements (lots) and their subsequent drain on our finances which we replenish with the toil of our minds and body leaving little time to actually enjoy said treasures.

It isn't so much the tossing and burning and endless hours outside in the garage stickering our former treasures with dollar and two dollar day-glow dots.  It is the realization that the charm of the things we loved in our twenties definitely didn't travel alongside us into our thirties even if we did carefully wrap them in tissue to store behind the box of Aunt Agnes's dishes under the eaves.  That didn't stop up from moving them to the next house either.  Maybe, just maybe, we would need them. 

Now that I am twice that age I finally get it.  I am not going to open that box.  Or the others.  Some things are passed down (another reason to be thankful for children).  Some are stickered with day-glow dots.  Everything else is donated or trashed.  My buying days are close to an end, thank goodness - except for clothes, paints and canvas.  I am content in what surrounds me for now.  The next house will be smaller and the process of elimination will start again and it will be no less easy to do.

I wish I had listened earlier to the urgings of family when they advised from their lofty height on wisdom mountain that I would find more joy in doing than acquiring.  I could have saved myself a lot of time.  There is a chair in the garden calling my name.  I will answer as soon as I carry this box out to the garage.