It's finally getting warm here the North Star State...and, yet, here we are, selling everything we own and moving south. Go figure.
It all started a few months back...an unassuming sight-seeing tour through the Florida Keys. Turquoise waters spreading out on both sides of the narrow bridge pulling us south toward Key West. The islands had that disconnected feel which only islands do, but less so, as we knew Miami was only an hour away.
The sign said "Key Largo," and we pulled out our smartphone and found the song online.
"Here's looking at you, kid..looking at all the things we did...we can find them once again, I know, just like they did in Key Largo."
A month later, a lot had changed. My husband lost his job, and we knew we needed to move out of our apartment. We put our notice in with no idea where we were going. We talked and wrestled and thought and prayed. Eventually we said: why not?
The past two months have been filled with Craigslist-ing for vintage campers, as well as shedding most of our worldly possessions. We now find our lives running contrary to the Western consumerism which surrounds us.
How to get rid of things? I find it hard to let things go. I bought them for a reason, and many of them hold memories. Will I retain my memories without these physical reminders? Will my points in time fade if I don't keep souvenirs of them?
I spent the day sorting through a huge box of photos, which I've moved from apartment to apartment over the past 10 years, cross-country and back. I finally admitted to myself, today, that I've actually moved these photos more than I've looked at them in that amount of time. So, I went through them. I pulled out the ones I didn't want to let go, the ones that struck me, whether it was the emotion of the memories or the art of the photograph itself. I ended up with a comparatively small pile of photos, and a huge stack of dog-eared albums on the floor...waiting to be discarded.
It's not easy...this process of releasing things I've worked so hard and so long to hang onto. But, with each item that passes on, I feel a little more liberated, a little lighter. The older I get, the more memories I have...and that means that I can't save as much as I used to. So, in between the picking and choosing, I am learning to place more value on each piece, and to let the rest of it go.
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