Packing is a lot like taking an inventory. As you work thru each closet, drawer, and back cabinet – you come across something that makes you pause. A memory, a goal, a project, a relationship suddenly confronts you as you hold that thing you’ve rediscovered. Then the “whys” start, or the “what now’s”. What was I thinking? Is it really something I want to keep, or a realistic part of my life?
I collected along the way, especially during the years I worked full time, each item with the idea of “when I retire”. Then during the school years, I was forced to just keep relocating things and collecting materials for my new reality of my studies. Then the physical limits I had fought against for so many years began to drain my energy and my optimism. So avoidance set in. And in this most recent phase I’m finishing, I tried to do it all. The home projects, sewing, canning, chickens, gardening, and growing a business I thought I already knew. The lessons of the business I will leave for later. The one I’ll share now is that what I thought I did and was has continuously had to be redefined.
But the other part of all this is an evaluation of how much of what I kept and planned was a function of the life I lived then. I have been single for many years, and I somehow saw that as unfettered. But all these things around me are the pieces and parts of living in the middle of a family and community that are scattered. They are things I did for those connections, not for the love of the thing. The cake decorating stuff was for them, not just the love of decorating. The crochet was for the love of doing it, and I could easily be buried alive under scarves, hats, afghans & baby blankets.
Anything to do with color fascinates me, but I’m not up to painting walls any more. Canning is practical, and I am good at it, but it is tedious if not done with a group. Canning for one or two people needs a re-assessment of how to approach it.
What I love most about sewing is the personality it expresses in the clothes I wear. But in a community where jeans are the standard, and overweight with no requirement for dress drains all inspiration. So I discover a basic lack of self-esteem in my appearance. Another thing I now understand I need to include in my life.
That carousel horse project was a lark, and it is better moved into the stream that will take it to a new owner. Most furniture comes and goes, a few special pieces and the practical basics are all that I need. But spare bedrooms ready in a house no one visits seems to represent the side road I wandered into more clearly than any other. I don’t do well with the state of waiting. And I’ve spent a number of years now just waiting.
I remember thinking that if I stabilized my income at a level where I could afford to visit often; it would all balance out. But that simply is not who I am. The visits always left me feeling more unanchored.
Cancers love home and family. I have no home, and my family is elsewhere. The home arts I love need to be shared.
I’m not ready to retire – I still have years to add to my professional accomplishments – albeit at a much less frenzied pace.
I have physical limitations – but I’m not sure that hiring someone to do what I love is the correct approach for me. It would be better to share wisdom with others than to feel the exclusion while watching someone else do what I love for me. The love is in the doing, not the having.
Family gatherings where we all cook are more the reality for me today than kicking everyone out and dazzling them with the final product – produced alone, outside the family activities.
I may be single, but I am not a hermit. My days of shunning myself are over.
