Advancing years and shrinking spaces can lend clarity to decisions about what we really need. This summer, Kathy and I will move from the spacious episcopal residence to a lovely 1,400-square-foot condo in La Mesa, near San Diego. So it’s been a season of trips to Goodwill, giveaways at the office, and a moving sale last weekend.We pray our tchotchkes will be happier in people’s homes than in storage boxes, awaiting our surviving children. Preparing to downsize, I was astonished at the number of things I hadn’t seen for years. Sixty-five years ago in Detroit, when funds were scarce, my mother bought delicately fashioned papier-mâché wise men. Every Christmas, she unveiled them as treasures. With one move after another, I lost track of them, and so for years, they haven’t found their way to the manger. I had to decide if it would be better to try to make my family fall in love with them for Jean’s sake or see if a stranger might, without even being asked.
In our neighborhood in east Pasadena, and nearby churches such as All Saints, which we visited on Sunday, the Eaton fire is still part of everyday conversation. A woman at the moving sale asked if our things were smoke damaged. Everything she owns was. She is still not back in her house in Altadena. Some fire victims say they found it far easier to get used to losing their clothes, furniture, and housewares than the personal items. In church, a woman whose home burned said that she misses over a hundred letters her father wrote her mother when he was stationed in Korea. It made me think of the boxes of letters and photos I have so far failed to pare down. Telling myself that retirement will be a good time for further consolidation, I put off throwing away college and seminary papers.
We will also move more books than we’d like. It helps that I’ve bought relatively few bound books these last 20 years, since becoming a Kindle early adopter. I gave away a lot of Civil War books, residue of a youthful fascination, but relatively few Jesus books. I still hope to age into the spirit of a song the late Guy Clark wrote but never recorded, “Step Inside This House.” I heard it on a Lyle Lovett album. He invites the listener to inspect his handful of treasures — a friend’s painting, book of poems from a girlfriend, piece of prismatic glass, old, hand-me-down guitar, leather jacket, and satchel for walking the earth. Reading this, Kathy will probably say that I might start by working my way down to the one guitar.
I could learn from granddaughter Frannie, 9, who had a kids’ table at the moving sale. She cheerfully negotiated over objects she loved back when she was seven or eight. We adults were less shrewd bargainers. Gazing into a box of CDs, I teased Kathy that no one had bought one of her favorites, Barry White’s greatest hits. A non-English-speaking shopper turned around and smiled. “Barry White?” he said. You know he got it for free.