A Few Unnecessary Items...
In 36 hours I'll be heading home. Not that I'm counting. Well, not much...
Got a call from the movers today - we will be loading all the stuff of our lives on Wednesday. Boy that seems really strange. I don't like packing - I have too much stuff.
Rachel and Elie have been reluctant to throw or give anything away. I kind of get that. A lot of the stuff that we accumulate through the years has STORY attached to it. We have an ugly green lamp in the basement that we bought to light the attic. When we moved to Warren, there was only a tiny pop-up to get into the attic. We put in a drop-down ladder and floored the attic so we could, yep, store more stuff up there. Steve Beach and Erik Larson helped me put the flooring down and for about three years after that there was a perfect size 13 crack in the plaster of the ceiling of our bedroom.
Story matters. And, to some extent, that's why some stuff matters, too. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't really have any attachment to that lamp - but the story...yeah.
So all of the stories that the girls have are tied up in Warren - and it's kind of freaking them out that they have to create new stories. So, we keep some stuff that really doesn't matter because to them, it really DOES matter.
In a way, I'm kind of glad we're moving when they are 4 (5 in two weeks!!) and 7 years-old. My family moved when I was four, again when I was five, and again when I was 11. Those were milestones for my memories to latch on to.
I remember the trains going by our house at night when I was three or four, and, oddly, running a car up and down the neck of my grandpa's guitar and climbing the big tree outside the house (really, it was a mountain laurel bush...but I was three or four). I remember the year we lived on Shelter Island (just off the NE end of Long Island, NY) - well, events from that year. It was the year of Hurricane Agnes and crickets in the basement and the giant rocks and learning to ride a bike. I remember so much from the next two moves, of course.
Stories. That's what we make of our lives, right? The stories that we tell. That's the connection we have with one another, too. I bet a lot of people remember learning to ride a bike. I bet some people have lost kite stories or sleeping through the night and pulling up at your new house in the morning and seeing your toys in the yard stories or first puppy stories. And we connect and relate and live IN one another's lives through the stories.
I have a handful of things from my life that I won't give up because of the stories - the things themselves don't really mean much, but I hold on because of what they mean to me.
So, I guess it's okay for Rachel and Elie to hold on to a few...um...unnecessary things because they'll be able to tell their new friends the stories of them - and maybe connect a little deeper because of that.
I can't wait to go home - no, not to Warren. I can't wait to go to Lori and Rachel and Elie.
Let me tell you a story about my family....
Got a call from the movers today - we will be loading all the stuff of our lives on Wednesday. Boy that seems really strange. I don't like packing - I have too much stuff.
Rachel and Elie have been reluctant to throw or give anything away. I kind of get that. A lot of the stuff that we accumulate through the years has STORY attached to it. We have an ugly green lamp in the basement that we bought to light the attic. When we moved to Warren, there was only a tiny pop-up to get into the attic. We put in a drop-down ladder and floored the attic so we could, yep, store more stuff up there. Steve Beach and Erik Larson helped me put the flooring down and for about three years after that there was a perfect size 13 crack in the plaster of the ceiling of our bedroom.
Story matters. And, to some extent, that's why some stuff matters, too. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't really have any attachment to that lamp - but the story...yeah.
So all of the stories that the girls have are tied up in Warren - and it's kind of freaking them out that they have to create new stories. So, we keep some stuff that really doesn't matter because to them, it really DOES matter.
In a way, I'm kind of glad we're moving when they are 4 (5 in two weeks!!) and 7 years-old. My family moved when I was four, again when I was five, and again when I was 11. Those were milestones for my memories to latch on to.
I remember the trains going by our house at night when I was three or four, and, oddly, running a car up and down the neck of my grandpa's guitar and climbing the big tree outside the house (really, it was a mountain laurel bush...but I was three or four). I remember the year we lived on Shelter Island (just off the NE end of Long Island, NY) - well, events from that year. It was the year of Hurricane Agnes and crickets in the basement and the giant rocks and learning to ride a bike. I remember so much from the next two moves, of course.
Stories. That's what we make of our lives, right? The stories that we tell. That's the connection we have with one another, too. I bet a lot of people remember learning to ride a bike. I bet some people have lost kite stories or sleeping through the night and pulling up at your new house in the morning and seeing your toys in the yard stories or first puppy stories. And we connect and relate and live IN one another's lives through the stories.
I have a handful of things from my life that I won't give up because of the stories - the things themselves don't really mean much, but I hold on because of what they mean to me.
So, I guess it's okay for Rachel and Elie to hold on to a few...um...unnecessary things because they'll be able to tell their new friends the stories of them - and maybe connect a little deeper because of that.
I can't wait to go home - no, not to Warren. I can't wait to go to Lori and Rachel and Elie.
Let me tell you a story about my family....
Comments
Good to hear how things are going. I was just doing research on the Pittsburgh Project a few days ago and I'd like to learn more ways to get involved.
Drop me a line at: eastman_tara@yahoo.com
Don't be a stranger!
Tara