Stuff

Another move looms . . . Less than forty-eight hours until we settle in to our next home . . . Boxes, empty cabinets, empty walls – and rooms that echo slightly because the curtains are at the cleaners. Yep, I've moved a bunch . . .

My first move -- just a couple of suitcases: I left  Baltimore for Ocean City – to work for the summer before moving to a college dorm, then, into two different apartments in the same building, before I moved two more times around the College Park area – acquiring stuff, discarding stuff –  never having enough of what the next living space required.

Next, I moved into an apartment near the zoo in DC; within a year I moved onto Capitol Hill, NE. From there I moved to Ecuador for a year – moving around the country, twice.  Illness and revolution sent me back to South Carolina, with little more than what I had in a suitcase to recover before returning to DC – the outskirts of Capitol Hill, this time in SE. Then I moved to Georgetown . . . from whence I married and moved to Annapolis. I left most all my stuff for others to use.

In Annapolis, we moved seven times in twenty-four years; we accumulated stuff.  Lots of it was other people’s downsizing. God gave us children, and our stuff really multiplied! The moves became more complicated – and we needed storage lockers.

We’ve moved three times so far in Texas, each time acquiring stuff – and now we are fixing to move the fourth time. We have let go of a great deal of stuff; photographs remind of us of our real treasures: people and places.  An assortment of images, freezing in time people, who are no longer precious babies, toddlers – or teens; of people who now know what is on the other side of this life; rooms we loved in, argued and cried in; holidays, vacations – I see the colors, smell the smells and hear their voices. They all go with me -- 

So, I am  used to moving . . . and the sadness and excitement that fill the minutes and hours of moving day.   Forty-eight hours until we settle into our next home . . . Boxes, empty cabinets, empty walls – and rooms that echo slightly because the curtains are at the cleaners. And in the upcoming abode – the scenario is the same . . . packing up, sorting, tossing, saving for another time to dispose of, . . . my life is still in moving boxes?