Journeys of a Bent Mind

I don’t have memories of Pearl Harbor, but then I was only three at the time. I have only a few memory traces from camp Amache, the American concentration camp my family was forced into for three years during WWII. Things were harsh for Mom and Dad, and for Janet who was 10 at the time, but for us younger kids, we were protected for a short while by what Mom and Dad did for us.

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We’ve been in our new apartment and home for some 8 weeks now, and things are pretty much settled. We have only a couple of boxes to empty, but they’re filled with books and we’re having space problems because I sold too many of our bookcases on Craigslist in our initial downsizing. So much for serious planning.

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Downsizing is a state of mind.

It’s hard to believe but we’ve been in our apartment for 6 weeks – April 2^nd was our move-in date, so 6 weeks is for real;. It doesn’t feel that long, sort of.

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I lied, there is another downsizing chapter in me: It is at its heart about transitions. It’s a rite-of-passage from one state to another, from one mind-space to tomorrow. For us, the first stages were with passing on those things we weren’t going to be able to take with us because of space limitations. Our formal dining room table with 8 chairs sold on Craigslist, as did our living room couch and companion easy chair. We sold standing lamps, end tables, and a slew of bookcases. Much of it sold for pennies on the dollar, and in the end St. Vinnies’ got a ton of stuff in donations. Surprisingly, we weren’t as attached to most of it as we might have thought.

Yesterday we passed a milestone in that we have been in our new apartment for three weeks. It doesn’t seem that long, but time passes when you’re having fun. The hectic part of downsizing is over, and we’ve survived. The stress and wear and tear of all the preparations is now comfortably in the past, and we’ve survived to tell the tale to our descendants. Now it’s Merlot time, time to kick back and relax in the confines of our new home. It’s Miller Time.

Having said that, there is what has to be the final chapter in downsizing, though it may not seem on the surface it fits under that rubric. But, bear with me on this.

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Yesterday I supervised the final task in our downsizing endeavors, the clearing out of all the trash and stuff and detritus from our garage – Things have a way of gathering in dark corners while you’re not watching, and the midnight gremlins certainly did a number on our garage – In addition to all the stuff and nonsense that we gathered over the 14 years in Panorama Drive storing them in the garage, I discovered in my checking that there were tons of cans of old paint left in the cupboards by the previous owner…! And, they left a whole crap-load of stuff they neglected to downsize when they left the house to us, so I ended up having to deal with their left-over stuff as well…

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We’ve been in our new home now for a week and four days, and things are settling down to more or less normal, at least a new normal. I had a senior moment this morning when I took my Prius for its 10,000-mile service, and on the way home I was on auto-pilot and got half-way home to our Panorama Drive home before I realized I was going to the wrong place, and I was now across town from where I should have been piloting. It’s going to take time to get into this new routine and stop having to back-track all over town.

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What if there was a theory of human behavior that explained how it is that humans develop a hatred for its own kind, that thing we call racism? What might it say about how we treat each other, and where in our distant past this thing first appeared, and how it survived over the millennia?

We’ve been in our new home coming on a week this Friday – The initial transition and moving went smoothly, and we enjoyed the banter and liveliness of the two men who pulled the actual move off – They were a treat, and made the move easier to manage.

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Downsizing XIV-A

Moving Day Mishap: The moving day playout was great in terms of overall success on many fronts. It was also enjoyable as these kinds of things often aren’t, but in our case it was in large measure because of the personalities and character of the two movers. It was most satisfying.

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