The world’s greatest grandkids came to visit during the eclipse. Ages 1 and 3 and 5. Oh, yes, their parents came too. We all had a grand time, before, during, and after the celestial event.
The oldest’s interests are largely mechanical. He goes into long monologs about “long-reach excavators” and “pipe layers” and “ductile iron pipe” and “storage silos.” The middle one is a budding ballerina, thrilled with the tutus that Grandnan made for her. The youngest watches his siblings with adoration and charms adults with his smiles.
We have just closed on our new house and are in the middle of getting our old one ready to show. Everything must be just so in order to look attractive to potential buyers. So the brick and gravel roads our oldest grandson constructed during the eclipse weekend have to go.
We do sympathize with his interests. Nancy mourns having to leave the pond and its frogs behind. But, we can take some of the rocks and seashells that accent her gardens. There are rocks she has named: the sail, the Easter Islanders (more than one). There is her New England rock, a smooth beautifully-banded soft-ball-sized stone she picked up as a child. There are stepping stones from East Tennessee strata, displaying crinoids and other fossils, seashells from the tip of Pass-a-Grille, Florida, and exquisite corals from a beach in Taiwan.
Collecting rocks and shells is an interest we share. Together we have gathered multi-colored pebbles from a particular spot on Watts Bar Lake, grain-of-rice sized shells from a beach on Kawaii, massive eroded and fossil-encrusted stones uncovered by the grading for a new development (with permission), and endlessly variable chunks from our own woods.
My mother had outlined one of her flower beds with stones from a mica mine that had been operated on her family farm during WWII. Mostly milky quartz (at least that’s what I think it is), but there was one coconut-sized piece of quartz so clear that it had bright green moss growing underneath. Years ago, I told Nancy there was not much I coveted from my parents’ house, but I wanted that piece of clear quartz when the time came. I have it now, plus a smaller one, and some large examples of the milky variety. They will travel with us to the new house. And the red mystery rock I picked up near an Idaho ghost town.
We debated about the pagodas. Weathered and moss-covered features of our landscaping, both had been rescued from oblivion years ago. The small one had been Mother’s. The large one was being covered by poison ivy in an unused corner of a lot down the street, whose new owner had been unaware of its existence. We had installed low-voltage lights in both pagodas and made them focal points. Should we leave them to a possibly-unappreciative new owner, or take them with us? We had almost decided to leave them behind, with a request that we be given first chance if the future buyer ever wanted to get rid of them. It was our son’s chagrin at leaving them that tipped the decision. If he was willing to help move the heavy stuff, we were happy to take it.
We have not taken all, by a long shot. The gardens here still look complete, to anyone but us. And we are moving to a place that also has been lovingly care for, whose former owners also had to decide what to take and what to leave, who also left a landscape that is, to an outsider, complete. The transition from grounds that were theirs to grounds that become ours will be gradual.
What to keep, what to throw away? Recurring dilemmas that we have debated, joked about, occasionally had fights about. For Nancy and me, reluctance to part with an object is usually less about emotional attachment and more about the likelihood of finding a future use. We are both do-it-yourselfers, so have an innate desire to hang on to odds and ends. It is a balance between usefulness and clutter. Can I even find it when that future use arises? Can I function in the meantime without tripping over it?
Some of what we moved to the new house, you might consider trash. I hauled one pickup truck load of paver bricks and blocks, tag ends of past hardscaping projects. Yes, we frequently find a use for two or three. I saved a small garbage can of two-by-four scraps, for blocking and chocking and propping. Nancy has drawer after drawer of feedstock for collages and craft projects.
A decade or so ago, a couple we know was downsizing. They offered, and we accepted, a box of wood scraps. Small stuff, mostly hardwoods, mostly non-standard sizes. Some had acquired a mildew smell, so the entire lot ended up in the attic to bake out. And stayed there for years. For a constellation of reasons, that wood scrap collection has become the go to source for a number of recent projects.
A band that Nancy plays in recently did a piece called “Instant Concert.” At one point, the score calls for hammering on an anvil, which in this case was a length of I-beam suspended from a cymbal stand. (Percussionists have more fun!) So, when I was moving tools from the old shop to the new one and picked up the section of railroad rail that I use when I have occasional need for an anvil, Nancy said, “You look at that and see a tool; I see a musical instrument.”
Organizing guru, Andrew Mellen, says don’t save things that don’t have a good story. A lot of good stories are traveling to our new house.