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.