To Pack Or To Purge

Just about four years ago, I picked up nearly thirty years’ worth of California experience and made my way back to the coast on which I was born. The West had welcomed me in 1989, just in time for a ferocious 6.9 earthquake; in 2017, another temblor rumbled under me—this time one of my own making.

Despite the challenge of considering a transplant to a whole new state, opportunity also beckoned along with the shifting earth beneath my feet. The epicenter was in Annapolis, Maryland—the place my sister and her daughter had chosen to call home, and a little further south were Brad’s daughter and her family. My son and his soon-to-be two sons were only a four hour drive away in Manhattan. When we contemplated moving, Annapolis seemed the obvious place to go. For years I’d craved being nearer my “Sis.” We had been “besties” when we were growing up, and I hoped we could be “besties” again as adults. Surely proximity would help foster such a relationship.

And so, I moved to a small city that feels like a small town, and which happens to be the state capital. Annapolis nearly floats, surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay and all its rivers, tributaries and creeks. To me, coming from Boston, it feels a bit colonial, somewhat like New England: brick buildings, gold domes, and cobblestone streets; and it also has a touch of the South—here all the tradespeople and service people call me “Miss Linda,” and that takes a bit of getting used to, along with the heat and humidity.

Happily, I set up a new home, one much larger than our last, and picked out new furniture to fill it. I made up spacious guest rooms for the family and friends I was convinced would come to visit us. I learned a whole new lexicon of native plants as I dug in bulbs and perennials. I didn’t realize it, but I was making a new nest. Simultaneously, I made a serious effort to stay in touch with all those I loved and had left behind when I moved east. For a while it seemed like the best of both worlds.

Perhaps all this sense of excitement and anticipation resembled what I’d experienced when I moved to California so many years before, into the home in which I raised my family. But now I am nearly sixty-eight and my sons are adults. I’m not raising a family, though I do have a new family of my son’s making, complete with two grandchildren. This house in Maryland had been the one I envisioned living in until I died, surrounded by my extended family, side by side with my husband.

But as time wore on, I became restless. This wasn’t California and my son did not live with me. Now, he and our daughter-in-law bring the kids down from Manhattan for only two weekends a year. Brad’s daughter is busy with her children and her job. My sister remarried, and although we have indeed grown closer and created a new relationship for ourselves, her attention has also become focused on her new husband and step-children. And so, our very large house has started to feel a bit empty; over the last year, I began to realize that moving here had really been, for me, just a way of getting nearer to all of these important people. Ultimately, our relocation hadn’t been as successful as I had hoped it would be because I hadn’t been realistic: their lives had moved onward–quite naturally–in ways that did not include me.

The fact was that, increasingly, Brad and I were rattling around in all our many rooms with an increasing sadness—a sadness that was nearly the size of the house. We decided to look for something smaller, hopefully a house on the water which we both love. If I couldn’t have my family tight by my side, at least I could wake up in the morning and see the Bay or a river or creek. Thus began a nine-month hunt as we attempted to downsize and obtain a water view at the same time.

Find it we did, and so once again we find ourselves shoving our lives into many cardboard boxes—this time for a trip across town rather than a three-thousand-mile journey. But now, to my surprise, I look around and find myself saddened. Why? I wonder. For one, I am leaving behind a house I love, even though it isn’t on the water, and secondly, there are so many “things” that won’t fit into a house half the size of this one. I must give up a lot in order to make it work.

Everything I pack I first consider putting into a box destined for the Red Cross charity, and I try to shake loose the idea that by holding onto the object I hold onto the memory attached to it–something which just isn’t true. Even without the object, the memories will remain. So I put my grandmother’s sterling silver candy dishes out on the “estate sale” table, I send my mother’s copy of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar to the Anne Sexton archive at the University of Texas, I say goodbye to my aunt’s collection of spoons from the Orient. I remember the way we loved each other and know that I don’t need these “things” to bring back the faces of my dear ones. Perhaps Toni Morrison says it better in her novel, Beloved:

“Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it’s not. Places, places, places—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don’t think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there.”

As I bend to throw yet another something into one more of the endless stream of boxes, I think to myself that each time you transplant your life it seems a little bit harder–even though you get smarter about what to pack and what to purge. Yet, despite the exhaustion and the anxiety, the lure of a fresh start does shimmer. Once I get past the unpacking, I will settle in and be fine. I can already imagine myself sitting on the new deck with my early a.m. coffee, watching the osprey circle down into their nests just a hundred feet away.

We are only going to a new house, after all: some of the china, the books, the sofas and the dog toys will indeed move with us. In the end, a house is just a house. The people who live in it are what make it a home. How lucky Brad and I are to be creating it together.

Yours,