Life as a rerun
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Did you miss me? During the past couple of weeks, I've been in California. It's vital when you are doing a compare and contrast kind of column like this one to get new fodder regularly. Actually, my reason for returning to California was two-fold. (1) To retrieve the last of my worldly goods that were left in my home in the Napa Valley; and (2) To help my daughter prepare a nursery for her expected child. In the process of going through things, removing things, fixing things, my life was like a movie rerun.
It began when we turned off the freeway on U.S.-12 and headed for the Valley.
Even though the windows of the truck were closed tightly I could smell the familiar odor of eucalyptus trees. I inhaled deeply! This is the smell of home on a warm Indian summer day. Fall had not quite descended on the valley when we arrived — it actually happened during the two weeks we were there with trees turning gold and wine-colored grape vines dropping their leaves on the valley floor. As we entered wine country, we could smell the scent of the crush in progress even though some vineyards still stood awaiting workers to pick their bounty.
For more than 30 years I watched the Napa Valley emerge from Orchard Land into Wine Country. For more than 30 years life accumulated in the closets, the garage, and the horse barn on my land. One of the advantages of Kansas, in the beginning, was that there was no residue from our other lives in our houses. We had the fun of starting new. Little by little we moved things from there to here, however, in suitcases, the trunk of the car, a truck full — even pulling a trailer once — and now, "This was it! All out. All gone."
I've done my share of moving in my past life and several times I've cleared out quarters for loved-ones. When Doc left Michigan and moved into a retirement center, we ordered a dumpster and ordered him not to watch while we threw away things he'd gathered for a lifetime. When Mom and Dad left the farm in Oregon and came back to Ramona we went through this same process. And now here I was in California — where dumpsters were so expensive as to be formidable, if not impossible on my beer budget, doing a rerun on life as I opened storage boxes and pulled things off dusty shelves, deciding what to throw and what to keep.
It's exhausting work for a keeper like me! We found puzzles and toys that were the playthings of my daughter, now expecting a child of her own. I cringed when she relegated a Playschool barn to the trash that I'd kept around for more than 30 years.
Belongings become a tremendous burden as they accumulate. We hauled away truckload after truckload of things to the dump, donated truckloads to charity, sold stuff at a garage sale, and there was still a trailer load of miscellaneous belongings to bring back to Kansas. "Where will we put them?" my sister asked on the phone. And then relenting, since she knew the toll this was taking to sort and throw, "Don't worry, Pat. We'll work on it together when you get home."
At first, Tooltime Tim, our guardian angel in this venture, too, said, "Just get it boxed, there's plenty of room." Eventually, he changed his tune as the stack got higher and higher. "It's time to prioritize!"
This is the stuff of life — the Christmas cards that I silk screened more than 25 years ago in some class. I couldn't throw them out. "I'm sending them this year again for Christmas," I told myself. The art work I'd forgotten about in the garage, "Maybe someone in Kansas will want scenes from the Napa Valley," I consoled my soul. The stuffed animals I'd gotten once for some Christmas party and never used, "Maybe I'll tuck them in stockings for the kids of Ramona," I mused. The wicker chair and bookcases that have seen so many reincarnations, "I've got to have somewhere to put these books." My bed, "We can always use another bed at one of the guest houses." Picture frames galore, "Now that we have the Barbershop Gallery we can use them — if not I'll give them to my art students."
"What on earth else do I have on that trailer which TTT stacked higher and higher?" I muttered to myself as we climbed over the Continental Divide. Truthfully, in the dawn before daybreak of the morning we headed for Kansas I fantasized backing the trailer up at the county dump and just pushing it all over the edge. "What if?" But that wouldn't have worked either. They are so environmentally cautious I would have had to sort and resort AGAIN!
So, we came home to Kansas with a whole lifetime of accumulation trotting along behind us. And you can only imagine what I'll be doing on another day in the country — for a month or more!
