The Countdown Begins

One week from now we will be on our way to the airport, preparing to board for this year's adventure in Peru.  It's finally starting to hit me what we are about to do.  I find myself overwhelmed by the rapid succession of feelings- anticipation, joy, anxiety, pride, sadness, loneliness, excitement, gratitude, exhaustion, fear, elation.

I’m surprised at my own small fright when I look around our near empty Baltimore row-home.   We have spent this past week packing boxes and moving much of our furniture into the storage unit.  We’ve left ourselves each a chair and the tv to get us through the last week, but it is lonesome with no comfortable place left to gather with friends.

This morning we held a yard sale and watched as all the “junk” we haven’t used in years, much of it pulled out of un-opened boxes from our move into the house 4 years ago, walked away in the hands of our neighbors.  It felt liberating, watching all that stuff go, except for all the books.

 Rachel with the neighbors cute son, Rohan

Morgan and Stef at the yard sale

We sold literally hundreds of our books, Morgan’s text books, books about jazz, about photography and Medieval Latin, and my novels, gardening books, and the few art books that weighed more than their edifying worth.  It was a little sad to say goodbye to all those books that had helped educate and define us as we became the adults we wanted to be.  But Morgan put it beautifully when he said that now we are free to start new collections, new libraries, accumulate new knowledge and experiences.

 someone was unhappy that we didn't finish setting up until 7:30am

Laurel and Rohan checking out the goods 

 Our future tenants stopped by to check out the yard sale

I also sold my car this week- the navy blue Jeep Cherokee that my parents gave to me when I graduated college in 2002.   I could not wait to get rid of that gas-guzzler as all my friends will attest.  I often felt it was cursed, having been broken into no less than 3 times, always needing more maintenance than I could afford, and just this summer the hood came unlatched and flipped up onto the windshield as I pulled onto highway 90 in New York.  And despite all that, as soon as I turned over the key, I thought, “oh… my Jeep” 

That Jeep and I traveled far together.  I always liked that I was an independent "woman with a Jeep", transporting my work, my life, and all of my belongings on more than one occasion.  It makes me happy to know that she is going to another young lady starting out on her own.  Hopefully her mechanic father will get the Jeep in proper running order for her so she can travel far and well with it too.

By next Friday,  all of our possessions will fit into a 150 sq. ft  steel-walled storage space.  Mostly it feels good.  We are scaling back to the place where our bodies are our homes and our relationship is our shelter, and that is the all the possession we need at this moment. Though it is daunting to leave all of our amazing friends in Baltimore, this feels like the finest way to start anew. 

-Rachel