Moving Sale

I was raised in one house, my parents didn't move from that house until I was 20 years old and then moved less than a block away. This is only remarkable to me, because since 1998 I have moved 14 times, LA to Boston, one move in Boston, Boston to Portland, Portland to LA, 3 moves in LA, LA to Maui, 4 moves in Maui and Maui to LA, one move in LA. Now we are embarking on a huge move, or more precisely, many little moves.

This move is more difficult, because for the first time we are actually selling almost everything we own, including the roof over our head. So tomorrow we have the first of what I am sure will be a few Garage Sales.

This morning as I was organizing the garage one of my neighbors came over to talk to me.  This is a neighbor who I don’t know all that well.  When I see him I always say good morning but that is where the conversation ends, from the dress of his wife I am fairly sure they are from India, and until today I wasn’t sure how well he spoke English. 

He walked up the drive way and pointed at the “For Sale” sign our relator put in the front yard, in a rather brusque tone he said “This is no good”.  Not sure what the problem was I smiled and asked “what is no good?”  “You cannot go”, he explained “I think it best that you stay”.  I smiled and laughed and thanked him for saying so, but we had sold the house and the new neighbors would be moving in towards the end of January.  He shook his head and grumbled his disapproval and then said “You are the best people on the block”.  I can only guess that our morning greetings are more than most neighbors share, of course we are probably the only neighbors he sees very often as we are early risers like he is, he usually leaves for work around 5:30 or 6:00 just when I am walking the dogs, but it was still a bitter sweet exchange.  We will miss our neighbors, and even after the trip is over this won’t be our home anymore, but we hope we will meet more neighbors on the way and when we do come back to LA, we will have said more than “Good Morning” to most of them.

 

 

Letting Go

It is interesting to be in the process of moving and selling almost everything we own the weekend after Thanksgiving.  As we are taking stock and making lists of those things we want to take with us or even more difficult to store for the next year or two, we are bombarded with messages about sales and deals and all the things we can buy.

I saw a commercial for a discount club and the woman said "Joining allowed me to afford a better life."  When did a better life become something you could buy?  I drive from my house in Hawthorne to my mom's in Manhattan Beach almost everyday, and I notice a difference when I cross into MB.  The streets are cleaner, there is more green space and everything just feels nicer.  The schools are better, there is less crime and I dream of being able to afford a house in this town.  But I also notice how many houses are dark at night, and I know that the people who own them are still at work at 8 PM and from the traffic in the morning I know that they left to work as early as 7.  The price of these clean streets and good schools is working long hours.  Yes it is better when you get home but how much time do they spend home?

What is life if not the sum of our experiences, of our memories.  As we start to break apart our house, we pack up those things that hold memories, the painting we bought in Paris, the hand carved tiki man from Hawaii, the family heirloom that has been in my husbands family for longer than he has.  And we price to sell those things that we thought made our life "better" the Coach purses, the expensive suits, the dinning room table.  Our purse will soon be our pockets, our suits jeans and sweat shirts and our dinning room table a rock.  But our life will be better because our memories and experiences from this trip will hopefully have made us more aware of our lives and the lives of other people we meet on the way.

Getting Started

Last Thursday we listed the house.  The plan was to wait until after Thanksgiving to show it, but we got a call on Saturday that someone wanted to see it.  So on Sunday we showed it and that night we received an offer.  We countered last night and should know by tomorrow if they will accept our counter.  If they do we will be leaving much sooner than anticipated, if not back to plan B or is it A I don't remember now we have had so many plans.  But right now it looks like the trip is on... Tierra Del Fuego here we come.