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 1941, 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.  At a certain age, at a certain point in time, the space we inhabit changes from a place of support, filled with memories and memorabilia to an obstacle course, filled with potential dangers; managing the upkeep and repairs of household fixtures from light bulbs to water heaters to plumbing leaks; stairs to climb, empty rooms to keep heated in winter and cool in summer, cabinets built up to the ceiling and well above the 5 foot 2 inches of the only inhabitant left. 

 

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 30^th 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.

 

Downsizing spaces, not memories

Downsizing Spaces, not memories

Or

TCHOTCHKA memories

 

 

The decision has finally been made after a costly repair to my heat pump and excessively high electric bills while it was running on electricity for almost a month.  I will move to a smaller space, a rental apartment without the angst of home ownership.  37 years living in the same house, watching the children grow and then outgrow their family home, moving on to their own futures; school, spouses, children, careers, homes of their own.

 

I walk through the rooms of my house, many fully furnished but rarely used anymore. First the living room, still used daily and lived in.  The couch, swivel chair, rocking chair and book case in good condition.  They move with me…check.  Easy decision.  The coffee table, shaped like the uneven bark of a tree, knotholes and all.  Of course it stays with me.  I can still remember the entire weekend we spent, Ben and I and two New York friends in New Hope, Pa., visiting a wood working studio.  I wanted the carefully sculpted three piece wooden screen/room divider, with eye holes that cast a subtle light onto the table.  It would never fit our small one bedroom apartment, but the table, its uneven edges, only minimally smoothed surfaces, it has served us well in apartment after apartment, house after house.  Looking at it today, the last day of another year without Ben, I can still hear our laughter as we tried to tie this bulky, weighty table on top of our car with taut ropes.  Ok, that stays with me, it holds more than books and old New Yorker magazines and coffee cups and remote controls. It holds the past.

 

The ancient stereo system, large cabinet still filled with old LP albums; jazz, opera, Broadway musicals, classical music, some classic folk rock.  It stands between two out-sized speakers, products of the early 60’s.  They haven’t been used for over 15 years, so they go. No difficult decision there.  But the albums?  Sell them? Even though I no longer have any way to play them?  Ok, they can go too.    

 

The table that is really a slab of marble atop an ancient sewing machine base, all wrought iron and ornate, that is also precious.  The day was warm, we were browsing in Ellicott City Maryland after the hurricane Agnes flooding.  It had survived and is now covered with pictures of the kids and grandkids on carousels. So yes, it also stays. 

 

Carousels?  I’ve always loved them, spent much of my childhood summers riding them, collecting gold rings, even a boyfriend for a while whose Dad owned the amusement park section with the skee-ball machines and the wonderful painted carousel.  One late August day Ben and I had lunch in Ellicott City and walked toward our car.  In the window of Taylor’s antiques we saw a full size brown, brightly painted carousel horse.  For sale.  For a price we could afford.  For ME!  His name is now Sylvester Stallion, and he lives in our house, wearing an old ascot of Ben’s, an Obama for President hat, ridden by a Barbie doll with pink ribbons in her hair.  Sylvester will stay with me.

 

Pictures on walls display the artist’s creation, but also the stories of where they were purchased or found, or given as gifts to us from artist friends; each has a back story.  A pen and ink drawing of a New Orleans strummer and musician, holding an umbrella and dancing in a parade; Ben was taken by it and purchased it.  It was almost ruined when he set it next to him in an old Oyster Bar in the French Quarter, where water flowed through a trench under the seats (an old fashioned spittoon).  He rescued it just in time.  The photograph of Thelonius Monk, looking down at the piano keys, which are reflected in his sunglasses, has special meaning too.  It was taken by a gifted photographer during the 1960’s in Greenwich Village. I purchased it the year after Ben died. When you look at the photograph, it’s as if Monk was playing just for you.  In a way, he was.  On our first date, November 1961, Ben and I went to hear Monk live at the Jazz Gallery in the Village.  And we sat in the audience and Monk wore sunglasses and he looked down at the keyboard.  I pass the picture daily, and I can still feel the night and the music and the beginning of love.  It stays with me.

 

My professional life, too, is recalled in photos and framed diplomas.  Pictures of the hospital I worked in for 15 years, helping to transform it from a convalescent home for children, aptly named  “Happy Hills Home”, to a state of the art pediatric rehabilitation hospital;  photographs of both the old and new hospital, framed, hang in my home office, a parting gift of thanks to me by the Board.  Photos of legislative bill signings, a Governor’s citation on my retirement working in the Governor’s office for six years; a pen and ink drawing of a child peering over a wall created by a fifteen year old African-American boy working as a summer intern with me in a County Executive’s office.  

 

And of course, the Tchotchkas (trinkets, or inexpensive toys; stuff).  The dented cup my uncle used during World War II in his mess kit ;the brass mortar and pestle that sat on my grandparent’s fireplace mantle; the cut glass vase and pitcher that went from my grandmother to my mother to me, used maybe once yearly;  a plate with Egyptian Cyrillic  symbols we picked up at an antique shop the day we purchased our first house in Baltimore, which hangs on the brick side of the fireplace; a mosaic tile reclaimed from a box in Toledo, Spain; extras from the renovation of a small temple. All have back stories, none that I am willing to part with yet.  

 

I have not mentioned the photographs; all the pictures in collages and frames and on the refrigerator, in scrap books and boxes and computer and smart phone “galleries”. Luckily, they are easily transportable and easy to store for they will not ever be discarded; they are the stuff of memories.