Down-sizing/right-sizing
Sizing up my options
On February 5, 2008 I began living alone for the first time
in my life. My husband Ben died, after
47 years of marriage.
Born in 1942, I had shared space and my bedroom with my
sister and parents until my marriage on February 22, 1961. 47 years. The first apartment we lived in had
one bedroom, one bath and I slept on a day bed in the hallway. Today, I live alone in the house Ben and I
bought in 1977; three stories, finished basement, four bedrooms and three baths,
rooms once filled by us, our children, and various dogs and cats fully. In winter, I transition to a much smaller
space, a two bedroom condo in St.
Petersburg , Florida
That smaller space provides me comfort and convenience. I
can downsize, I’ve been experimenting with it for the past 10 years and it
works. I read articles and books on
aging in place; I’ve even lectured on the subject to senior groups both in Florida and home in Maryland
What follows is a rollercoaster of emotions: I need to
downsize! Yes, but where would I put all
the furniture, pottery, paintings, tables and couches and book shelves in less
space? Each painting or drawing has its
own story; where it was found, what it meant to us, what memories in evokes. I even have a full size painted carousel
horse that has pride of place in my living room. This house is too big, too expensive to keep
up! Recently the house needed repairs to
the heating system, costing upwards of $1500 dollars and shattering my monthly
budget. More importantly, why I am
heating so much space, when I barely use one quarter of it, and only for 8
months of the year?
But there are the memories filling up the spaces, housing
footprints of holidays celebrated, favorite foods cooked, birthdays remembered,
our 30th wedding anniversary, our daughter’s Bat Mitzvah reception,
the Halloween ritual of eating hotdogs on rolls so we could answer the constant
peal of the doorbell. The basement is now totally devoted to a potpourri of
storage items long unneeded; gift wrapping papers, excess bowls and dishware
and unused bedding, even a queen sized bed not used for over 25 years since our
daughter moved away for the last time. I’ve
found at least 100 old record albums, but no turntable to play them on. And books, always and everywhere the
books! Some dusty and dog-eared, some
probably never read, all vying for pride of place in the front row of deeper
shelves.
We used to celebrate Christmas day playing an endless game
of monopoly on the living room floor: cheese, salami, crackers and cider eaten
while the fire roared and our dog, Hersey waiting till the game was almost over
to lazily wander in and walk over the game board, knocking everything
over.
How does one carry all those memories, pack them up, consign
them to new spaces, sell, donate or gift them others, without feeling an aching
emptiness?
I’m usually not the kind of person who holds onto things;
Ben, my husband, was the saver: olds drafts of writing, magazines by the
dozens, articles to be cut from newspapers and filed away, even socks with worn
out heels. I was always the one
instigating periodic sprees of organization, discarding the unused, the old,
and the “we’ll never need this again” criterion for disposal. But suddenly I find myself holding onto files
or books or scarves, concert programs or pieces of pottery, not wanting to
discard them, not wanting to whittle down my stuff.
What I am realizing now is that I do want to downsize, but
only my space, not my memories. I may
end up in a smaller house or rental apartment but I am sure the walls will be
covered with my collections of art work, the tops of surfaces filled with
pottery, an antique mosaic tile from Spain and of course, the carousel
horse.
What will be missing is the companionship, the shared
experiences and the stories a house well-lived in collects. These I will keep inside.
