Ups and Downs

We are having a yard sale tomorrow to pare down for the moving truck. Every pound we don't need is money we could use, and there is plenty in this house that we could live without. IKEA furniture that served its purpose but was never aesthetically pleasing: gone. On-sale prints from Kohl's that did the job when I was first decorating 8 years ago, but were never quite my style: hopefully someone else will find them right up their alley.

I am totally thrilled to be lightening our load. I am a fan of participating in consignment sales and neighborhood yard sales as often as I can muster the energy. It just feels good to clear out things that aren't being used any longer.

Today, however, felt different. I suppose it began when someone rang our doorbell in the middle of the afternoon, wanting to see the furniture we'd advertised for sale. He had a truck and a big wad of cash. Obviously some sort of dealer, out for a bargain. Something about the way he snooped through our stuff made me depressed. It's all remnants of our life, after all, just lined up in the garage with little colored stickers on them, marking a price no where near what I once paid. Things that matter to me very little (you will not find me parting with anything formerly belonging to my departed grandmother, for example), somehow, seemed significant. I suppose it's because in nearly every instance I can recall the exact circumstances surrounding the purchase or the receipt of a gift, and each item thus marks a stage of my life, particularly here in Pennsylvania.

We arrived here from student housing in Boston with a two-door car and a U-Haul loaded with just enough stuff for a one-bedroom apartment. This four-bedroom house was ridiculously empty until my grandfather shipped some of my grandmother's furniture, which made the place more homey. Over the years is has been filled to overflowing with various items reflecting the stage we were in: from baby swings to playpens, to Little Tykes slides and train tables in our basement, to hideaway computer armoires and craft-center hutches in the kitchen.

It now seems strange to be stripping it practically bare.

The sadness had arrived this afternoon, not long after the buzzard-guy had left, when I was grocery shopping with my little one. As I walked the aisles, I could not seem to shake the feeling or to cheer up in any way, despite my overall positive feeling toward the entire move and its justification. But an hour or so later, when I picked up the other kids at school, my mood was quickly lifted. They were two balls of energy, and pure happiness to boot, as they carried home heavy bags filled with their artwork and yearbooks. It took me a while to even recognize that I wasn't sad anymore; the feeling just disappeared in the face of their pleasure and my satisfaction at seeing it.

Which points me right back to the true purpose behind this whole endeavor: the happiness and contentment of my family. When my children and husband are happy, I am happy. When they are not, I am not. What is possibly even more true is like the old southern saying, "When Mama ain't happy, ain't no one happy." And never is that more true than in my house. In this way, the emptying is strangely liberating. All that surrounds us simply what it is: stuff. What is important are the lives that are contained within these walls, the people who live and breathe and NEED us to be there for them, not the accessories that are simply there for the ride.