THIS PLACE IS FULL
… right-sized right now
Thursday May 8, 2014
“Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving toward finding the answer … ” – Denis Waitley
Metaphorically I understand terms like reduce, re-size, carbon footprint – issue of making lives less about things, less about boxes called homes we store them inside. I have, for sometime been in down-size mode, travel-light mode, with ambitions of summer here and winter somewhere else – but still wanting comfy familiar place to come home to, a place to call home again after feeling transient too long.
I can imagine – a laptop, a backback and a passport being all that I need. That lasts about five minutes because I go from room to room debating what I would give up vis-à-vis what I MUST keep. But progress is being made . . .
Maybe the secret of downsizing the excesses in our lives is to move to a smaller place every couple of years – forces decisions and action. Wearying and invigorating all the same time. Moves, moving, moving on, moving along, have been apropos descriptions of so much of my life over the last fifteen years.
Too much of that.
This has been a long journey, to get here from there …
Now, this place is full.
My things, my home office, my sense-of-home is all in one place again. Not everything made the trip - (some still to com - file boxes, some things still hanging on walls, misc. things to move/trash and cleaning yet to do). Otherwise I’m done with that place …
Yesterday’s move – large furniture items (many thanks Kevin & crew from Premier Van Lines) brought this slow-moving process to substantial completion (thanks also Fred & staff at ServPro for great carpet cleaning) – swiftly playing their parts in my drawn out process. Most surplus items are sold, given away or trashed. A few left . . .
This recent move has been some parts torturous, some parts cathartic – part physical, larger part emotional. Today marks two months since my dad’s death.
I’m just now, I think, getting a sense of the measure of the man – not in terms of his words or deeds, but as his reality of living here, in this place. It isn’t his home anymore. It is mine. You would see that. My things, my way. Some of his are here, but more as memorials than as essentials.
When my dad moved into this condo fourteen years ago it was his last move. No unlike many others here, without expectation of staying for a while and then moving on.
I’m here.
For now.
Not forever, not always – but now, here.
Establishing new routines isn’t hard. I know this part of the city very well – so shopping, services and getting to know the area isn’t going to be difficult.
I’ll make changes – as I think everyone does when sorting themselves out in a new home, as we re-think and re-organize cupboard items to make our kitchen work, as we move things around until it is just right.
This place is full, of him, of me.
In time I will down-size some more, relinquish more of my past so I can be less hampered in pursuit of the future.
Mark Kolke
198,080
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: -1C / 31F, soft rosy sunrise greeted a clear sky, quiet chipped away by so many tiny birds chirping away – chilly morning air lifts sprit as much is fills my lungs.
