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I have been handed a mythical Volkswagon-sized loofah sponge to scrub away all the dead, frivolous, and pointless possessions we have accumulated over our lives as a family. Packing will force you to give your stuff a good, long, steely-eyed look and wonder why have we kept this broken shower caddy around for so long?
Other sentences that we have been saying to each other are “what is this?”, “when did we get this?”, “why did we buy this?”, “are we ever going to use this?”, and “would anyone buy a broken cookie jar at a garage sale?”
I would love to have a garage sale, but I am afraid nobody will want to buy the things we have to sell. Most people who go to garage sales on the weekends are looking for priceless antiques and collectibles that the sellers are too dim to realize they have. Garage sale-goers often have “Antique Roadshow” delusions of grandeur. If they come to our garage sale, they will find a ficus tree, a coffee mug holder, old sheets, a rickety changing table, an pillow with an owl on it, and a broken cookie jar. If I am going to spend two days sitting at a card table in my garage with a cash box, I want to actually sell something. I suppose we could list our junk on ebay, but it could end up here and that would be embarrassing.
Consequently, a lot of things are going to be donated and the rest is going to be thrown out. It was kind of nice opening my streamlined closet this morning and thinking how sleek and organized it looked. I should strive to adopt a more simplified life all-around.
We found the house. I knew from the moment we walked in the door there was something different about it. Something made it stand far above the rest. It wasn’t the biggest house, the newest, the cleanest, or the most obvious choice on paper. It isn’t the most convenient. Parts of it make zero sense—there is no linen closet upstairs and I am not sure what that means for the dozens of towels and sheet sets we have. Hopefully some sort of dormant ingenuity will kick in and I will figure it out.
The sellers accepted our offer over the weekend, we signed the contracts, and now we wait for the inspection and appraisals to be completed. With a good inspection and minimal problem spots, we will close at the last possible minute in May and move in June.
Now the massive project of packing up the lives, belongings, and junk of seven people begins. It is somewhat overwhelming. And I find myself becoming teary-eyed over the oddest things. Today, for example, I dropped Sammy off at his preschool and realized that I would be writing our very last tuition check to that particular school and it made me a little sad. Our kids have attended the school for the last four years—first Aidan, then Ryley, now Sammy. Tommy was to go there next fall, but it is too far to drive from our new house, so he won’t.
Another bittersweet realization came when it occured to me that Joel will have no memories of this house. He won’t remember the stairs he loved so much, the room where he slept, the spot in the kitchen where his highchair stood, the backyard hill he ran down nearly out of control but managing to stay upright. He won’t remember the next-door neighbor’s puppy, Miguel, or walking down to the mailbox to help me retrieve bills and coupons for tire alignments.
This month is going to be one of the busiest of our lives as a family.
Sometimes I wonder why we live in Colorado. The “springtime in the Rockies” thing is becoming tiresome as yet another bout of snow and cold has descended on us.
If I wanted to participate in old-fashioned May Day traditions like leaving flowers on the neighbors’ doorsteps, I would have to shovel the walkways, unbury the insanely resilient pansies from the snow, pick them with mittened hands, stomp through the snow to the neighbor’s front door, and remove the mitten to ring the doorbell. As I attempt to run away and hide I would slip on the ice and crack my head open. Imagine our neighbors’ surprise seeing me laying on crushed purple pansies, sporting a head wound. I can’t remember if the tradition then calls for the neighbor to pinch me or kiss me—either way, they would probably decline in favor of dialing 911 to haul me away for an MRI.
Indulge me while I try to remember why we live in Colorado…
  
Oh, yeah.
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