Settling in

We're nearing the end of our first week in our new place and the best way I can describe is this: Imagine stuffing a size 12 foot into a size 8 shoe. That's what it's been like to take possessions accumulated over 23 years' time and try to find a way to squeeze them into a substantially smaller living space.

I'm not saying we hauled over every last thing. But I am saying that it's taken most of this week to make decent headway on what is here. The garage, so appealing when it was empty prior to our move, is halfway full with boxes, crates, shelves, bicycles, camping gear, etc. Our living room still lacks a table. Garment boxes still take up too much in one of the bedrooms.

This weekend, much of that will change. I've planned a major assault on the garage. Not that everything will be sorted through, but at least things will be moved and stacked so there is a semblance of order. I will assemble the new dining room table. And I will lug the garment boxes to the garage.

You may be wondering why there's a photo of Mabel on this post. Well, animals take some time to adjust to new situations, cats especially. So it warmed my heart to get up yesterday morning and find Mabel on the window shelf of the guest bedroom, looking down through the glass into the courtyard. That showed me she's beginning to feel comfortable. (The photo was taken last night as she was perched on the living room sofa.)

I'll try not to write ad nauseam about our new place. But it is exciting, living in a place with so much natural light, becoming familiar with a new neighborhood, walking just a few blocks to the bus stop or restaurants, sleeping soundly because we no longer live with the white noise that came from being on a somewhat busy corner.

That new sound we hear? Silence.

Home Sweet Home

As if we didn't already have enough on our plate...

We've just sold the Craftsman-style home we have lived in since 1986 and are preparing to move into a brand-new condo this Saturday. As in two days after Thanksgiving.

Yes, we're downsizing. No, we didn't think things would move this fast when we decided in September that it was worth doing. We thought we'd put it on the market and see what happened. We took a couple of weekends to clean out our attic, our basement and closets, and then got it ready for staging in October. Lo and behold, it was on the market for just five days. We received two offers and just like that we were in a position to make an offer on a condo in a new 10-unit development less than two miles west of us in Northeast Portland. After some minor back and forth, our offer was accepted and it was full speed ahead.

I've waited until now to post anything about the move, partly because I didn't want to detract from the other major thing going on in our lives -- planning for this month's wedding of Jamie and Jordan -- and partly because I didn't want to jinx us in case anything went awry with financing, home inspections or the buyers of our home. Our patience was rewarded this week. The morning after we arrived back home after the wedding, we were in a title insurance office signing loan documents to close the sale. Now, all that's left is to sell selected furniture items on Friday, finish packing up and wait for the movers to show up Saturday morning.

So how does it feel to leave the comfort of a place that's been our home for 23 years?

Exciting. After living in a sturdy old house, built in 1926, we're looking forward to the conveniences of a new home where everything works, efficiently and unfailingly. Can't say that was always the case here, with some seriously old appliances and the quirks that come along with owning an older home.

Emotional. This is where we've lived since Nathan was 6 and Simone was 3, the place where we brought Jordan home, at 5 months old, from the foster home where he'd been living before we adopted him. It's the place where we opened our home to a succession of dogs, cats, rats, a rabbit and a few anoles (small lizards that, unfortunately, didn't do too well with us because we couldn't regulate the heating lamp in their very well -- you can imagine the end result).

Liberating. After all these years of watering, mowing and raking, not to mention shelling out for a new roof and gutters, exterior paint jobs, etc., we can finally say goodbye to it all. Owning a home is a wonderful thing, but there's no escaping the responsibilities. There's also no escaping the escalating property taxes. Not that we're against paying our fair share to support the schools, parks and other local services. Taxes are the price of civilization -- something that (cheap partisan shot coming) too many self-centered folks fail to realize or choose to ignore.

Prideful. This is where we raised three great kids and built a warehouse of memories. From our home on the corner, we could walk our kids to school and take them to the neighborhood park. As they grew older, we could see them to the bus stop down the street. Later still, we could listen for the familiar sound of a car, signaling they'd made it home from wherever they'd been with their teenage friends.

Exciting. Did I mention we're excited? After living with, between and surrounded by boxes for the past few weeks, I'm more than ready to pack up and move. Yes, we'll be leaving a physical place. But we'll taking our memories with us and starting a whole new raft of them. Just as it's still sinking in that our youngest son is actually married, so too is it sinking in that we're actually moving. We'll be waking up in a new place, with a small balcony outside our bedroom and a new view of the world.

How cool is that?

As summer ends, a time to reflect

So we're doing some spring cleaning around the house -- about a season behind schedule -- and it's triggered some thoughts about memory and sentimentality.

The simple act of cleaning off a chest of drawers was liberating, in terms of reclaiming space that I'd given up to an assortment of tsotchkes -- stress balls, pens, sticky note pads, luggage tags, pin-on badges -- and other odds 'n' ends, including shoelaces, toenail clippers, ear drops, eye drops, business cards and foreign coins. It's astounding (and embarrassing, I admit) to look back at what I accumulated over a period of years.

But at the same time, going through all that stuff was touching. I came across postcards I'd bought after museum visits in Tucson and Atlanta, as well as a card my sweetie had given me just to say "I love you." I tossed out old receipts, product warranties, even an old watch.

But I also rediscovered a small stack of handwritten notes I'd kept from a reporting trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, 20 years earlier. (It's pronounced wah-HAWK-ah.) Seeing all those names, addresses and other information in Spanish made me think back to those weeks in early December when a photographer and I traveled in the Mixteca Alta, the mountainous countryside outside the city of Oaxaca, to report on the economic conditions that drive poor, mostly undereducated Mexicans to the United States in search of a better life. I could visualize the evenings we spent dining and drinking at the zocalo (the town square), the delicious meals we ate at roadside shacks, and the kindness and generosity of people everywhere we went.

Tenderly, I examined the pages torn from a reporter's book with phrases from an indigenous language -- Mixtec -- and their corresponding meaning in Spanish. I'd had to rely on a translator to tell me in Spanish what a local resident was saying in Mixtec so I could in turn tell the photographer in English. An amazing trip, that was. Without a doubt, the highlight of my years as a reporter.

There was one mystery item: a key chain attached to a four-inch piece of macrame with six metallic letters spelling out GEORGE. As best as Lori and I could figure, it might have been a parting gift from one of our Japanese exchange students years earlier. Ayako, the first one, was around 12, as I recall. Chiho, the second one, was 19 or 20, I think. They'd be in their late 20s or early 30s by now. Wow.

I couldn't have spent more than two or three hours going through everything. Some items were easy to toss out. Others, not so much. The whole exercise made me slow down and really think about some things I'd held onto: When and where did I get them? What specific memory did they trigger? Did I care enough to keep them? If so, where in the heck would I put them?

We'll be doing more house-cleaning in the next few weeks. These questions will pop up again as I consider saving or tossing favorite items of clothing, old record albums and more.

Photographs: Copyright 2007-2009. Tanyo Ravicz. All rights reserved.
http://www.mixtecindian.com/Mixtec_Foto_Album.php?aa=0&si0=9