Shorelines: A deeply moving experience
All the stars seemed to align when we made the decision to sell our winter home just before Christmas. The five-bedroom house on two acres in Pennsylvania was quickly snapped up by a young couple looking for room to raise their two little boys.
Our family had moved on, with a son on Shelter Island and two daughters with their families in Manhattan. Rather than remain keepers of an empty nest, we could lend a hand with our own little grandsons as they grew.
We embraced the idea of downsizing to a one-bedroom apartment, letting go of much of the house’s contents: “I don’t want to be possessed by my possessions,” I declared confidently. In hindsight, I should have just hired an exorcist.
We were lucky that family members who’d been in our pandemic “pod” could safely and willingly pitch in to empty the full basement and attic of treasured mementos: school pictures, costumes, report cards and baby shoes all had a home.
I found calendars I’d used to keep track of swimming classes, gymnastics lessons and doctors’ appointments. I didn’t realize I had even saved them, possibly in anticipation of a Supreme Court nomination.
In one, I found notations of a trip to the Bahamas — on the day the Challenger blew up — followed by doctor appointments and tests for myself, resulting in life-saving surgery (you’ll have to read the book.) There were many journals, countless framed pictures of the family — and one of me with Paul Newman (you’ll really have to read the book).
Unless you’ve had this experience, you can’t imagine how difficult it is to find a new home for a houseful of stuff — even in a landfill. 1-800-GOT-JUNK took a truckload away and charged us $700 to do it. A 20-foot dumpster would be filled next, followed by three dumpster bags that we were filling up until the day we left for good.
Finding a thrift shop that would take 30 books a day was a game changer — although they’d only take novels. Plenty of non-fiction books will find a good home later, probably at the library sale room.
Once we identified the limited set of furniture we’d need in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, we lined up a mover to pack a truck for delivery. Another question was what to do with the items that fell somewhere in between. Not keeping — not tossing.
For those, a yard sale might be the answer, but not in snowy January, nor in a pandemic, would we want a yard full of strangers. The solution was a pod — a cube we could pack and send into suspended animation somewhere for a few months.
Maybe a yard sale on the Island this spring will be the answer for the piano, other furniture and the giant stuffed penguin, when we’re ready to deal with it. We’ll see.
As the closing date approached, Murphy’s Law went into overdrive. Record snowfall pushed everything back a bit. After notifying our fuel oil company that we’d be moving, we had to call back and order one more delivery to get through the last few days.
But the fuel truck couldn’t get up our snow-covered driveway, so we had to call the man who plows us out, one last time. The day before the closing, the title company said to make sure we had our passports for identification.
I had mine and my husband, dear life partner, knew exactly where his was — in the box of special items from his top drawer that had gone into the moving truck and was now somewhere en route to New York.
Several calls later and he was assured his driver’s license would be accepted, if he could also produce a birth certificate. Also on the truck. Eventually his Medicare card would be accepted at the closing to corroborate his existence.
One last task was on his mind that day. Having cleaned out the attic, he wanted to go up and sweep it out for the new owners. Minutes later, the noise I heard from upstairs was so loud and frightening that I kept telling myself it couldn’t be as bad as it sounded. I found dear husband in one piece. I was grateful for that. Then he took me to see the hole in the guest room ceiling.
I said some bad words.
You have to understand that since we moved into the house some 30 years ago, he had warned me and all the children that the attic was only floored in its center area. On the sides, there was nothing to prevent a misstep from plunging you through the Sheetrock below.
We were relating this mishap to our daughter on FaceTime, and she could not hide the smile that played across her lips at the irony that her father had done exactly that. “Dad’s lucky he didn’t get badly hurt,” she said. (He’s lucky I didn’t kill him, I thought. Did I say that out loud?)
Thankfully, the new owners were so anxious to get their family settled that they agreed to a modest monetary adjustment and the closing was completed the next day.
Soon we were on our way to Manhattan, where our other daughter had gotten the new apartment cleaned, supervised the movers delivering the furniture and greeted us with pizza and wine. We could wait until the next morning to open and make sense of the first few boxes.
I can’t explain why I could find an avocado slicer and not one spatula in the box we’d given priority when we packed. We feel like we’re living in a Neil Simon play, getting acclimated to a place where the kitchenette — not kitchen — has only room for one person, and that’s fine.
I long ago ceded my kitchen privileges to my dear partner, whose culinary skills outstrip mine. I’m sure he’ll whip up something just fabulous with that avocado slicer.
