Transitions: The Move/Shrink-Wrapping the Piano-Part 4

When I was a child living in the inner city, we had a large upright piano that somehow had made it into our fourth floor apartment while I was in school, so I don’t remember how it got up there in the first place. But for sure, when my father’s job moved further upstate to a more rural area I DO remember moving day when the piano was lifted out of the apartment by way of a block and tackle installed in the big living room window (or roof?)  and lowered four stories DOWN onto the sidewalk and then into the moving van. What a sight that engaged the whole neighborhood…people hanging out of their apartment windows up and down the street to watch this amazing event.

Moving my piano out of my little house and transferring it to the home where I am staying with friends was not quite so dramatic, but what was most interesting was the neat and tight covering of the piano with artful folds of a thick red quilted blanket. It reminded me of the incredibly disciplined folding of laundry by military men at the Laundromat!

 

What then was most entertaining was the “shrink-wrapping” of the piano, tightly wound round and round over the thick red quilted blankets by a moving man of good humor, expertise and tattoos. My precious golden-hued instrument disappeared completely underneath layers of clear and silvery looking cellophane so that anyone who fancied stealing a piano would never have a clue where it was.

(I also share that these crafty movers also shrink-wrapped my green brocaded covered sofa which is now standing on its side in the corner of the storage facility)

In its new location in the art studio of my friend, the shrink wrap was unwound in the opposite direction, off came the blankets and voila! A piano once appeared from the amorphous package…safe and sound in a brand new place.

I am blessed to have been able to bring my precious piano with me on this in between journey from the old to the new. Hopefully it will give the whole household here pleasure especially during the Christmas season in the playing of carols and music of the winter season.

From the old 

 

 

 

 

To the new

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Christine, The Greening Spirit in Transition

 

 

Transitions: The Move/Too Much STUFF (or Where is my favorite Spatula?)- part 3

One of the most shocking things about a move is the sorting through and packing of STUFF… All kinds of STUFF that we have come to consider as essential in our lives under the finite roof over our heads in the structure we call “home”.

We don’t have to be identified clinically as a “hoarder” to realize as we pack that there is STUFF in our lives everywhere which indeed is problematic when needing to wrap it up and leave! All those little Hummel statues, bottles of medicine and cough and cold remedies, a bag full of various lengths of extensions chords, the spices and herbs in the cupboard, little boxes of staples for the 3 sizes of staplers, the box of drawings from when our kids were little, our high school yearbook (and now we are over 60 years old!), the three crockpots, the shoe stretcher, the souvenier champagne glasses from that island vacation etc etc etc.

The vacuum cleaner, the Weber Grill and extra propane tank, the lawnmower, the birdfeeders, the table saw, the aerobed, the carwash kits, the flower pots, the bags of compost, the dog’s dishes and heartworm pills, the kids toys, the …the wall sconces and moveable fire-pit and all those little pieces of sea-glass and white stones collected at the beach and arranged on a tabletop altar…and….and…and….

Since this move, when I am visiting friends in their little or big homes, I find myself looking around in the room at all the things they will have to pack too when and if they have to, or decide to move and relocate. Just looking and imagining that exhausts me all over again! My word..do they have any idea what they are in for when it is their time for change?

When I started my process of packing things neatly, systematically and by category in my plastic bins, bringing them to the storage, I took pride in the fact that I was organized and somewhat in control of this arduous and exhausting project.

 

BUT at the end of the big move-out, the last few days when it was truly clear-out and GO time, it ended with  “just-get it in there!” any way we could. And the reality of STUFF…too much STUFF!…. struck me with such a force….  I felt like I was dragging Marley’s chains and began to entertain the desire and ability for a second purging to let it all go in time…

Except…one has to eat! And I cannot cook without my favorite spatula which I have had with me since 1968…. a wedding gift that has been part of my life, kitchen, well being and  creative cooking adventures all these years.  So…” Where is my favorie spatula in all that STUFF??? “

Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know where it is…and this week, I shall enter the cave where so much of my life is in boxes and bring it out to live with me in my shared living space at this time. Not ALL of the STUFF is mere clutter… I know exactly where to find it in that above storage!

If you would like to know more about my favorite SPATULA, check out my essay on the other blog of mine:

https://sensuoussoupsandsuppers.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/memoirs-the-treasured-spatula/

My hard-won advice to any and all who think they might be moving between really soon to within the next TEN years: start sorting and simplifying NOW!

*** I would love to hear your own moving experiences..so many of us in this process and it is no small event in our lives. I have adjusted the settings for you to share a comment…

 

From Christine, the Greening Spirit

 

 

 

 

Transitions: The Move/My Life in Boxes- Part 2

The time came when it just didn’t work anymore… after about 8 years of hangin’ in, hangin’ on it just didn’t work anymore.  Letting go of a home…especially if it is also your place of work and service is traumatic and fearsome, especially if you are not sure where you are to go next. In my case, my home, besides being private and comforting Sanctuary, was also my professional and service base teaching piano, writing, and hosting a variety of peer mentoring circles, like a retreat or periodic workshops in New Moon gatherings, cooking or herbal preparations. Those who have come together in my living room also were letting go of a sacred space apart from the world that served as gentle sanctuary and community for all of us and they too were concerned and saddened wondering if we will be able to stay together in special time-apart space.

My garden…this year in convenient grow boxes.. was my inspiration for this summer’s series on the Greening Spirit, photographing and taking delight in all things green as well as the most beautiful Japanese Maple on my lawn that radiated peace and loveliness in all seasons, always visible from my front door.

I am fortunate though to now have interim time staying with friends who are dear kindred spirits and we are creating for this time on my journey into the unknown a kind of elder “commune” experience. What this has meant for me in an exhausting period of intense sorting, packing, and organizing is he breaking down all that is part of my physical life and environment in a focused review of all that I have been, all that has been part of different chapters of my life.

Photos, years of  writings in folders, cookbooks, journals, music and music books, cds, audio tapes and dvds, art supplies, musical instruments, pots and pans, office supplies, candles and ritual objects, shoes and clothes, beauty products, dishes (4 sets) , BOOKS of a number of separate and treasured genres, house decorations, statuary, towels and sheets, knives and forks and cutlery, photographic supplies and cameras, coats and jackets, boots, shoes, garden supplies, grow boxes, clay flower pots and bags of organic soil, seeds for vegetables and flowers and…and….and…canned goods and spices, herbal teas and herbs and…and…much more. And keeping track of that one special tool…my favorite spatula without which I cannot cook!

The enormous challenge has been not directly moving from one place to another to establish  another home, which is not possible right yet. Packing for the immediate now- life in the shared interim place with friends and packing all furniture and most items and supplies of my familiar in-progress life into bins, bags and boxes in a storage facility has required an intense all-consuming focus.

My grow boxes came with me….not to go into storage…but to winter outdoors as is recommended, now under the pines in the woods of my new sanctuary. I am learning new things shifting from independence to inter-dependence. I have learned how to make a fire in the woodstove which yes, is all new for me.

But my life in boxes…boxes in the storage facility, boxes here in the basement, boxes in the loft where I am writing, boxes under my bed in my charming little bedroom… Many chapters in a life….in boxes…..the price being paid for a new kind of freedom unfolding…..

 

From Christine, the Greening Spirit in Transition

 

 

 

 

 

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Transitions: The Move/Saying Goodbye to a Home: – Part 1

It has been a long time coming, this letting go of a home, land and a familiar way of life. For some, it may be a move to a larger home, a smaller home, an apartment or condo, either up-sizing or down-sizing. Sometimes there is excitement and a sense of delight in  accomplishment, sometimes it is bittersweet or a relief letting go because one must do so, responding to situations that must be released because they no longer work….which is, in my case, my story.

Sparing the details of my story, suffice it to say that challenges to sustainability and economics forced my hand for new decisions that required massive letting go and leaving the sanctuary of home where I have lived, loved and worked for almost 20 years. propelling me somewhat into the vast unknown and an unfolding new chapter in my life.

I am not alone in this scenario of releasing a home back to the bank and being in an in-between place while sorting, recycling, giving away, throwing out,  putting into strorage or taking with me to a new kind of sheltering in sharing space with good friends. Going from being a solitary to living in community as it were is a change, though now technically in our early elder years, we seem to have reverted to the experience of the 1960’s which I teasingly referred to as a return to the “commune”  except now we are older, saavy, more organized and purposeful as craftspersons, artists and musicians in retirement or semi-retirement.

I have a lovely little bedroom here at the home of dear friends, am sharing the downstairs studio of the artist mistress of this house for the purpose of continuing my own profession of teaching piano while surrounded by her magical and imaginative original-crafted dolls and colorful felting objects d’art.

I have moved from a surrounding woods of oak, to a surrounding woods of pine.

 

 

 

 

 

I am writing not at the kitchen table of my original home, but instead in a loft upstairs in the house overlooking the studio below and treetops above. The loft as an artist’s storage/workspace has now also become a  writer’s alcove.

Packing/moving is a traumatic experience, no doubt about it, and it has been my sole pre-occupation for well over a month, if not much of this year. Today, Friday, December 4th at 3:00 pm, I, by personal initiative, will “vacate” the house/home  and the familiar known way of life, locking the front door and moving 11 miles down the road and inland to the newly experienced sanctuary of warmth with dear friends and the elder “communal” sharing for a while. I am even after a month of packing, leaving things behind that have no place or space to go. Releasing….

Believe me when I say it has taken a great courage rising above fear to enter into such a release and leaving. This has been one of the “biggie” life challenges and change for me, and I know for many others in similar but unique circumstances. I expect there to be surprises along the way and things to learn and experience that I could not have learned otherwise had I stayed rooted and fixed in familiar predictable space.

I cannot help but ponder at this time a world in which so many on the planet are now on the move as true refrugees, not sifting and sorting and storing and recycling, but on foot, sleeping on the road and carrying with them only the clothes they wear and some small bundle of personal necessities.

Perhaps “Saying Goodbye to a Home” is a planetary theme.

 

From Christine, The Greening Spirit