Help
Sign In
change
February 2009 
A Moving Experience
Posted on Jun 13th, 2008
by 
wrensis
wrensis
I added it up last night. I have moved, or more accurately been moved 32 times in my life. This roughly works out to every two years my surroundings change. This has a good many drawbacks, but a surprising number of advantages. Not the least of which is being able to meet people from many different places and environments. I have lived In California, Florida, Michigan and several states along the east coast. I have lived in Istanbul Turkey. There were brief moves to Atlanta and a long stay in upstate NY. I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite. Florida is my choice for the least liked. They have way too many bugs and the heat and humidity are exhausting.
One of the distinct advantages is you do not collect large amounts of "stuff". I did haul my books for many years until the cost became prohibitive, I now only keep a really select few. I have the habit of re-reading old books at different times in my life and enjoy the new perspective each reading supplies. I love when I am able to visit the site of one of my author's books, like the visit to Big Stone Gap. Gathering of stuff becomes oppressive. You have to find a place to put it, you have to maintain it and you have to make it fit in with a lot of other stuff. Never having been a clothes horse my wardrobe is very small and probably laughable. I tend to wear a summer "uniform" of slacks and kurta type tops, in the winter the pants get a little heavier and I were turtleneck sweaters. I never keep something I do not wear.
I have also minimilized the acquisition of things to put around to look pretty. This makes visiting shops much easier, I inspect, admire and pass on the purchase. I do have a modest collection of boxes of all sorts. I keep small trinkets given to me by friends in the boxes so that they are not only lovely but useful. I kept a large basket of cards and event programs in a huge wicker laundry basket, but that started to overflow so I sorted and kept the most special and disposed of the rest. For your information nursing homes are really not interested in you used cards. The one thing I will not part with easily is my rock collection. I have a rock from every place I have ever visited. Some are fist size or a little larger, most are pebble size. I have them in baskets and bowls. I enjoy trying to remember the placesI found them.
My furniture is "early relative" and pretty well used. Someone told me one time that tif hey saw my furniture on the side of the road they would instantly recognize it as mine. It is pretty eclectic. There is the round solid oak dining room table I bought from a woman who had raised five children around it. There is the sadly deteriorating marble chest that I found in a garage of a rental and cleaned up to it's original beauty. The owner was so impressed she gave it to me. Thank you Lottie it has brought me much pleasure. There is the chest that my husbands mother kept in her dining room. I store my non digital photograpy inside. My husband would prefer to get rid of it but it reminds me of the childhood he so successfully overcame. I like plants. Plants do not generally like me and frequently die from my lack of a green thumb. Currently I am attempting orchids. If you can't grow a normal plant why not try an impossible one.
I remember a neighbor when my children were small that had immigrated from Nazi Germany. Her father was a scientist and she was named for one of his theories. She described their departure from Germany. They dressed in everyday clothes so as not to call attention to them as the four of them walked away from everything they owned to begin a new life. I think it is a good thing to be able to place your welfare above your possessions.
I watch the horrible weather that has hit the midwest this early summer and see the people who have lost everything struggle with the concept of starting over. Occasionally there are the ones that say we are alive. Alive is what matters. The pitiful destruction of Katrina that sent people out of their homes and many to far away places still stings as a failure of the American Dream and how much you can rely on your government to come to your rescue. The waste of valuable supplies, rotting in expensive warehouses rather than be distributed at the time to people in dire need.
Everyday of my life I am moving. I am, as Bill Moyer so aptly put it, camping one day closer to my death. I love my life and I particularly love the fact that I have had an incredibly diverse life that has offered me so many unique opportunities. I am not terrified by death. It will be just one more move to the unknown.
One of the distinct advantages is you do not collect large amounts of "stuff". I did haul my books for many years until the cost became prohibitive, I now only keep a really select few. I have the habit of re-reading old books at different times in my life and enjoy the new perspective each reading supplies. I love when I am able to visit the site of one of my author's books, like the visit to Big Stone Gap. Gathering of stuff becomes oppressive. You have to find a place to put it, you have to maintain it and you have to make it fit in with a lot of other stuff. Never having been a clothes horse my wardrobe is very small and probably laughable. I tend to wear a summer "uniform" of slacks and kurta type tops, in the winter the pants get a little heavier and I were turtleneck sweaters. I never keep something I do not wear.
I have also minimilized the acquisition of things to put around to look pretty. This makes visiting shops much easier, I inspect, admire and pass on the purchase. I do have a modest collection of boxes of all sorts. I keep small trinkets given to me by friends in the boxes so that they are not only lovely but useful. I kept a large basket of cards and event programs in a huge wicker laundry basket, but that started to overflow so I sorted and kept the most special and disposed of the rest. For your information nursing homes are really not interested in you used cards. The one thing I will not part with easily is my rock collection. I have a rock from every place I have ever visited. Some are fist size or a little larger, most are pebble size. I have them in baskets and bowls. I enjoy trying to remember the placesI found them.
My furniture is "early relative" and pretty well used. Someone told me one time that tif hey saw my furniture on the side of the road they would instantly recognize it as mine. It is pretty eclectic. There is the round solid oak dining room table I bought from a woman who had raised five children around it. There is the sadly deteriorating marble chest that I found in a garage of a rental and cleaned up to it's original beauty. The owner was so impressed she gave it to me. Thank you Lottie it has brought me much pleasure. There is the chest that my husbands mother kept in her dining room. I store my non digital photograpy inside. My husband would prefer to get rid of it but it reminds me of the childhood he so successfully overcame. I like plants. Plants do not generally like me and frequently die from my lack of a green thumb. Currently I am attempting orchids. If you can't grow a normal plant why not try an impossible one.
I remember a neighbor when my children were small that had immigrated from Nazi Germany. Her father was a scientist and she was named for one of his theories. She described their departure from Germany. They dressed in everyday clothes so as not to call attention to them as the four of them walked away from everything they owned to begin a new life. I think it is a good thing to be able to place your welfare above your possessions.
I watch the horrible weather that has hit the midwest this early summer and see the people who have lost everything struggle with the concept of starting over. Occasionally there are the ones that say we are alive. Alive is what matters. The pitiful destruction of Katrina that sent people out of their homes and many to far away places still stings as a failure of the American Dream and how much you can rely on your government to come to your rescue. The waste of valuable supplies, rotting in expensive warehouses rather than be distributed at the time to people in dire need.
Everyday of my life I am moving. I am, as Bill Moyer so aptly put it, camping one day closer to my death. I love my life and I particularly love the fact that I have had an incredibly diverse life that has offered me so many unique opportunities. I am not terrified by death. It will be just one more move to the unknown.
Access: Public
