Move

I had my own room, the only girl, the last child by 9 years. It was converted from a bathroom. When my brothers moved out, I got their room, and stuffed it with my brother's left behinds, which I treasured. I went through phases of collecting, like TV Guide covers. Eventually outgrowing and purging the crap. I never kept old school projects, with the sole exception of a paper mache whale. My 'own room' was an assumed essential quality of life.

I moved from my parent's house to Kalkaska for four months, a job, a failure. Back to their house until I reclaimed my scholarship and found an apartment to live near school, bad roommates and all. Still beat living under rigid long outgrown rules. Then another crappy apartment, other bad roommates. Then an apartment with the not-yet-ex. A move across the country. A move to a rented house while I was away in training. I voiced no opinion since I expected to move out first.

When I escaped from the ex, a medium box of childhood stuff and my Army gear was about all I had. Some clothes, not that I had much at that point. A single futon frame and a foam mat. I lived in friends' basement room for the two weeks it took me to find an apartment. The new place was bare, and I had my small piles stacked around the edges. Within two months, I would be back to two duffle bags and shifting at the whim of the US government.

I have moved more times than I can count. The long painful process of picking through and discarding or packing everything I own has been a constant theme of my life. Accumulating and thinning, examining and starting all over.

I could put in one medium box items I have had since childhood. High school yearbooks, (3), Raggedy Ann, a small decorative chest - a gift from my brother. A few small odds, mostly in those drawers of the sort : "That may be useful, so I will keep it." Most of my Christmas ornaments - which belonged to parents, grandparents, and elderly neighbors who gave them to the only family in the street with children, when they were no longer interested in putting up a tree. I wound up with most of the survivors. Adding a number of my own over the years.

D went through a similar series, from parents house to crap apartments with varying degrees of tolerable roommates. Then a room in a rooming house where he was afraid to actually sleep. I proposed, he said no. Although he wanted to spend his life with me, he was not keen on the wedding thing. So, he moved in, and the place filled with stuff, and we adjusted. It took time, and a yes, a very tiny wedding. I yearned for my own room, still. Another move to a new, huge apartment, several guests would visit in the back bedroom, and second bathroom. It was a shiny new place, badly built, with "issues." We had medical bills, we moved to an older, cheaper, and (not obviously) better place.

We lived in that well maintained, cozy two bedroom apartment for five years, then moved across country, shedding crap at an amazing rate. Then a large one bedroom for a year, a benefit of the traveling agency, accumulating items for useful reasons. Only to take a studio for solid financial and quality of life issues, and paring down again. Only to find out it was going condo, and at luxury prices. A third move in three years, and I have lost the ability to actually feel the annoyance, though it is there. Still, a better location, better rent, an actual bedroom again.

Somewhere along the journey, I stopped missing having my own room. Our lives slide along together, I do not need the space, because I am given privacy, without asking. We do not need more stuff, because we have each other.

Anyone need a glass lemon juicer?