As you (hopefully) noticed, there was no column from this scribe last week. We’re all the better for it. My wife and I moved–downsizing, as it’s known. The logistics and emotions take a toll, hardly a complement to sensible prose.
The relocation reality is this: You’ve left your comfort zone, your ‘hood, your neighbor-friends, your routine, your, seeming, identity. That landscaping that’s as aesthetic as therapeutic–it’s now somebody’s else’s. Some notable furniture, tchotchkes, memorabilia: gone. You don’t have enough room for all your “stuff.”
It is an emotional roller coaster. The unexamined life is easier. You take a 2018 look at stuff you’ve been lugging around for years. Why do you still have it? A memento from a junior prom. Faded programs from high school football to political conventions and Super Bowls. Goofy coffee mugs. Out-of-fashion, but nostalgic clothes from another era and another body. More art than art-worthy walls in the new digs. Will this piano fit–anywhere? And a journalist’s private archive: Where ego meets roach motels.
In the end, you jettison more than you thought you would. In the end, you are what you keep.