Just Write {74}

We were talking numbers with a realtor. The discussion back and forth between Ryan and this 26 years veteran of real estate left me dazed, staring off toward our piano, wondering if we’ll take it along when we move.

They worked out the numbers. The only thing my brain would do in regard to numbers was try to plan how many plastic storage bins I want to buy this week because they’re on sale. I was imagining putting all the things in them that we don’t use every day, to pare down and clean off and give the house the appearance of tidy and minimal and open and big.

After our realtor left with promises of putting the house on the market on March 1, I took the bins we already have and headed downstairs to go through our storage space. I organized the kids’ clothing and re-organized the boxes and bins already waiting to be moved. I put all the old photos in one big bin instead of in several bags and small boxes. I stacked all of the Christmas things together and moved things around just so…

I opened bins to see what they held and resurfaced all of the keepsake totes and boxes. I took it all out to put it back in, together in one place. I held tiny knitted baby booties in the palm of my hand and smelled the sweater that Elsie wore the day we left the hospital and came home. She was so tiny, it bagged off of her and the sleeves had to be rolled up.

It’s so small. It went with the booties, on stacks and stacks of the most special artwork from the boys.

Hospital bracelets, favorite photos, old letters and cards.

My intention with this big afternoon project was to make a pile for Goodwill and get other things ready to move. I promised myself I’d carefully consider each item, in every bin, because who wants to move more things when you don’t really really need them?

The keepsakes, though. When it comes to our children, I won’t let go. Strange for a minimalist like me, but there are certain things you simply do not do away with. That onesie that was my favorite on Miles and then on Asher. A pair of the tiniest socks you’ve ever seen. A card from a dear friend who was almost as excited as we were that our first baby had come.

There is another bin that holds old letters and pictures and things from before I got married and had children. The things I’ve had trouble getting rid of in the past–things carried across miles and years to tuck away in a basement, unvisited until forced. I went through them again, and just like the last move, I was able to put more in the recycling, more in the garbage. It hit me that this is a good way to know if I’ve let go, of this or that time, that person or that memory that was too strong to release, five or ten or twenty years before.

Some of it, some of them, will always stay, like my children. Heart constants. There are parts of the past that simply cannot be left behind. I used to think that if I worked hard enough at it, had enough therapy or something, my stomach would stop dropping at the mention of a name or a season. But no, that’s not how life works.

We move on, literally and figuratively and we recycle and we throw out and we keep.

So much of the time we are not the ones who get to decide what lands where. We don’t know until we hold the very thing in our hands and stand there a moment, thinking over how it would feel to let go.

A few times I said, No, not yet, and I tucked the thing away again, back in its holding space. A few times I tossed the pile of letters in the recycling and took a deep breath that was a short funeral of sorts. I felt nothing and then knew it was right.

That will never happen with the baby or childhood things. Those are the ones we want to keep, to slow down, to freeze both vivid and blurred in whatever year they’re from. And so we do.

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This is the 74th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not freely written in the spirit of capturing moments–you know, don’t link to how-to lists or sponsored posts. I want people to remember that this is about writing and not about traffic. Also, please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in. 

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