Learning to Accept Your Moments of Clarity

                

     Sometimes in this life, there are moments of clarity in which we know something that we should not yet know. I don't believe that I am actually unusual in this, as I think most people, if they are reflective, and honest and have a decent memory will remember such circumstances.

                      When my Dad was young, he had one of these moments. As he listened to the radio and heard Hitler, he believed that he, and the rest of the world would be drawn into a world war and that my father might lose his own life, if he did not choose his role in this war carefully.  His family, including uncles and aunts who were teachers, principals and professors tried to allay his fears and tell him that the war was simply a European phenomenon, but somehow my father knew. This motivated him to become a Merchant Marine Radio Operator at sixteen, when just after Pearl Harbor, funds were quickly funneled to the programs teaching such skills.  My father had many such moments of clarity in his lifetime, some were positive, and some were sad, but they did allow him to plan in a manner which benefited those he loved.

                      I too can remember such moments of clarity.  On a class trip I took in middle school to George Washington's home, Mount Vernon,  I had a strange and sad feeling. I felt a strong draw South and I wished we weren't returning to the Northeast. Somehow I knew that the best years of my life would be spent South of the place I was standing, and I remember that strange feeling, that pull, to this day.

                      Eventually, as a young married adult with then two small children I had eventually moved to a suburb of Richmond, Virginia.  At one point, I accepted a job at what was then St. Luke's Hospital in Richmond's western end.  Traveling to the hospital in those first weeks from my new home, took me on roads that were not yet familiar.  At one point after work, even through I knew that I was supposed to take the highway heading East, for some reason I was drawn to the West.  My head knew that the house we had just bought was East of the hospital some distance, but again I was strangely drawn West, believing that my long term home was certainly West of the hospital.  I traveled West for about twenty minutes past miles and miles of evergreens and oaks beside the highway. Eventually, I took the next exit and turned around and went home, but I didn't forget this.  Ten years later, we bought ninety acres in that place to which I had been traveling.  We built a farm there, and raised a total of five children there. Indeed, that area had been the place in which I have been happiest.

                     I also recall, that a few days before the birth of my third child, we were in the car and headed for the hospital. I had been having some complications and thought it was likely that I would be admitted that day, and I was afraid.  All at once, we made a left at St. Matthew's Church.   In that moment I knew that the baby I would have in the next couple of days would be a boy, and his name would be Matthew. I could envision him as a child, with blond hair, green eyes, and very quick and bright.  Although we'd had ultrasounds, we had not been told our child's sex. Three days later, in the morning,  Matthew was born, and as a child, he became exactly who I had imagined in those frightened moments before his birth.

                    It's a shame that we can't will these moments of occasional clarity that human beings have sometimes. Perhaps all we can do, is accept these flashes of clarity when they do come.  May your life bring you as many pleasant moments of this type of clarity as is possible.

A Contrarian View of Decluttering

          

            If I were to be honest, I don't really understand people who are enthralled with decluttering mavens. My first apartment had lots of space and I didn't have to worry much about measuring before I acquired something new. In sharp contrast, the first house I owned, right after that, was very small square footage and out in the country.  I had to part with most of my furniture from my first apartment to my first home ownership experience. In a small square footage house each piece of furniture and its scale had to be carefully considered before acquiring it and bringing it home. It took a while but I became very good at selecting small items and keeping everything in its place.  Once we had small children, even with an addition to my small house, the house was too small. We sold it and moved to another state to a house that was larger, but not large. Then, every few years we sold and moved up to a larger home each time, but also we put more money down each time in an attempt to get closer to being debt free.
        
             In most of these houses, everything was organized and I either didn't have the space or the time for clutter. Most things had an assigned space, and most of the time things were in it.   Eventually, with five children in total, we had a lot of things.  The last two homes we have had, we built, and the last one has outbuildings we added. Now, we have a lot of things. However, I am still not racing to declutter.

           Some people feel liberated when they part even with most of the things they have. These are the people to which the decluttering mavens are speaking. I am not one of these people. I have worked very hard to select and to acquire the items that are in my home. I don't acquire things on a whim. If I don't really like it, or it doesn't have a memory attached to the item, then it's not there in the first place.  I also don't feel particularly happy if I donate something to Goodwill, and then find in two weeks that I or someone I know really needed it after all. See, I have a better memory than most people. I still remember the lovely bronze towel racks I planned to put in my first house in the 1980s.  Then I found that they didn't really fit there.  Rather than taking them with me on the out of state move to see if they worked in the new house, I sold them. I have regretted that sale in every house I have been since, but most of all when my daughter bought her own house, as a twenty-something and those bronze towel racks would have worked beautifully in either one of her bathrooms!

          I also have the memory of having bought a beautiful wrought iron carriage lamp at a garage sale in the 1980s before moving from that first house. I had no idea where I would use it, but it was perfect, beautiful, and had been rewired. I knew that if I held onto it, that someday I would find a perfect place for it.  It took until 2006, but when we had a large barn built, with fencing around it, and I needed a glorious lamp outside a particular door, and it was perfect.  From 1986 to 2006, it sat wrapped in sponge and bubble wrap, being unwrapped periodically each time we moved. Each time, I chose to hold on to it.

        Decluttering mavens tell us that if you haven't used it in six months that you should get rid of it. I am certainly glad I didn't get rid of my alpaca scale (for crias, or baby alpacas), my incubator for chicken, guinea or grouse eggs.  I am glad I still have the incandescent light set designed to keep young or sick birds warm. I am glad that I still have Elizabethan collars for every dog size, and collars and leashes as well.  I have a fair amount of horse gear in the tack room, and I plan to hold on to it. We should part with the items we wish to sell or donate, and we should hold on and make appropriate accomodations for the items we truly wish to keep.  I don't need someone telling me which items those are.  

          There are some specific decluttering challenges which come to us.  My youngest son died in 2008, and for the longest time I held on to everything that he had loved. It was almost as if I felt as if he returned he would be unhappy that I had parted with it.  It took a long time before I was able to part with things so that others would enjoy as much as he did.  Finally, as time passed I was able to part with his things. I still kept a core of things that held special memories of him for our family.  I also experienced the challenge of both of my parents passing away within a year of one another. They had been divorced when I was an adult, and so there had been time for them to establish their own residences and acquire full households. I sold or donated most things because they were each in other areas than I.  Eventually, I decided I was sufficiently grief stricken that I should place the remaining items in storage, and then review and sell or donate these items when it wasn't such an emotional hardship to do so.  Honestly, I have been pawing through this stuff for years. However, I am glad I did.  When my daughter bought her home, she actually selected some of the antique furniture that my mother, and then my father had.  Some of those items will remain in the family. It also gave me time to consign some of the items and to actually locate some things I thought may have been lost.

           Although it's true that things are simply things, sometimes they mean more than that.  My mother's antique copper pots and teapot sat on a shelf in every house I remember. They now sit on a shelf in my own country kitchen.  Some of her Wedgewood jasperware collection sits with mine.  My Dad's thousands of pages of correspondence to family, friends and some notables, was very helpful to me when I wrote a book on him which was released in 2017.   Things are simply things, however they were made by materials left here on Earth by God, and then lovingly turned into a memory by people.  Stuff is not the problem. Recognizing the intrinsic value of the items you have and then deciding how best to honor those items can be.   I know that everything cannot be kept. I realize that if my baby granddaughter does not love dolls, that my dolls are going to eventually need to find a loving home.  The ultimate disposal of the items I have loved is up to me, not to a decluttering maven.  Sorry, Marie Kondo. I will be doing it all myself, and I won't be made to feel guilty as I enjoy the memories as one by one, I dust, package and find new homes or even a museum or two for my father's books.

The White Converted Barn

                                                                           Not at all as it was.




               I grew up in a rather rural part of the Northeast with severe winters, white Christmases, and Halloweens cold enough that we almost always had to wear a costume that could be worn with a coat over it.  We had a large home that my parents were restoring, in an area where most of the rural homes had been built between 1750 and 1880.  My parents had a lot of interesting friends, some of whom lived locally and others who visited us from New York, or sometimes even from Europe.

                One couple of my parent's friends lived only about a mile from us. The husband worked, and they lived in Manhattan much of the time, and they came out to their home near us, a couple of weekends a month.  At first, they had another neighbor watching their home while they were in the city, but eventually when the original neighbor returned to work full-time, as a lot of women in that era did, my mother agreed to keep an eye on their home.  Later, the arrangement evolved. In exchange for excellent money, at the time, my mother agreed to change the sheets there, and keep the place vacuumed and cleaned, so that when they did arrive, they could simply relax rather than have another house to maintain.  My mother actually enjoyed going there once a week, making a cup of tea while watching their kitchen television, while working at her own pace in someone else's home. When she was finished, she would pick up the check they always left in the same place for her. My British mother had been a high level banking employee in London, but after she married my father, and while her children were young, she was mostly at home. This was a chance to have her own money for birthdays, and for vacations.  During the summers when school was out, from the time when I was about nine, I went with her, as our friends had said I could swim in their pool.

                 My mother had been actually an excellent choice to manage their home in their absence. Just as she was with her own home, she was detail oriented. She noticed everything, and maintained whatever she could as if a realtor were coming tomorrow. While my mother ran the vacuum, and dusted, I played the grand piano in the living room, and then changed to use the kidney shaped pool. Even now,  I remember the house as if I visited yesterday.   It also had the most remarkable guest house, which my mother also occasionally needed to enter and to maintain.

               The main house had been a stone barn that had been converted to a residence, and rested on a large, mostly wooded acreage.  The entrance we used most often, opened to a kitchen to the left, and on the right, to a dining area. To the far right, there was also a door which opened to slate steps that reached to a slate and iron terrace, which overlooked the kidney shaped swimming pool.  In the summers, there were red geraniums in cast iron containers, outside the house and on the terrace. From the inside, beyond the kitchen, there were several steps which led to a cathedral ceilinged living room. There was an exceptional black grand piano, a comfortable leather couch, some coffee tables and art and ceramics on shelves. There was also a fireplace that I don't think they used very often. They had magazine racks with some of the nicest magazines I had seen on design, things to do in New York, etc.  The living room had the widest plank wood floors I believe I have seen anywhere. This was the first house I had seen that had been decorated in an eclectic yet expensive fashion. The owners traveled the world as part of the husband's job, and brought interesting objects home from foreign countries, and then placed them somewhere in their country home. To the right of the living room, there were stairs which led to the basement and to the laundry area. There were also stairs which led up to a landing and more stairs to a bathroom, a master suite and two more bedrooms.   The guest house also had several bedrooms, and a bathroom, though as I child I thought it strange that it did not have a kitchen also.

            My parents house was being restored and was very much in keeping with what I later learned was consistent with the English country style.  However, our friends with the barn style house, kept the house itself consistent with a stone and wooden structure from the 1770s, with some antiques, but they also incorporated quality furnishings and design pieces that were contemporary. I don't know how they did it, but it amounted to what I will call timeless eclectic. Every piece was beautiful, interesting, and belonged where they chose to put it. They also tended to buy the most expensive kitchen appliances. It was the first time I ever saw a Bosch dishwasher. Somehow, their house was always comfortable, yet not fussy.

            Eventually, as I grew, the time came for the husband to retire. They would keep their apartment in Manhattan, but they would spend much more time at their barn home nearby. I was finally able to meet some of their family, including their grandson, who was about my age. They also built a small pool house by the pool.   My mother was no longer needed to care for their home, which by then, was a relief to her, as she wished to spend several months in England visiting family.  We still saw the friends who owned the barn house quite often, especially since they bought a beautiful German Shepherd who often came to visit with us, as soon as they made even a day trip to New York.  They also cleaned out their house a couple of times, and asked if there was anything we wanted. I wanted it all !  Items from their house didn't just remind me of them, but of the serenity and eclectic nature of their property.  I enjoyed their magazines, some French tiles they parted with,  and some other small items.

            As I grew up and went to college early, my father once again took a job where he now traveled around the world. My mother was more available, and spent more time with her friends who had the barn home.

           After college, I left the state, married and bought my first home. I had children, and was focused on my own life and tasks. I know that my parents continued to be close friends with the family who had the barn house.  Eventually, one and then the other of them died.  I was glad that I had kept the small items from their home that they had given us.  I remembered them both fondly.

           As many families did in the years which followed, we tended to buy a home, do some improvements, and then sell about every four years as our family grew.  Although I favored colonials, I still found a way to incorporate the items given to us by the family with the barn home.  The last two homes we have owned have also been on large acreage, and have been homes we built as farm houses.

           Some time ago, I decided to look up the address of the barn house where I had so many happy memories, of both the home, the dog, the pool and of course, the dear people who had lived there.  The house is no longer there as I remember it.  After their passing, it sold to a couple who changed it from the estate it was, to the estate it is now, closer to their own vision.  The estate that was worth about a million when I was a teen, is assessed for several million dollars now.  Sadly, from internet pictures taken the last time it sold, the house I remember exists now, only in my memory.  I had not understood how much this special place had meant to me, and I am sad that it doesn't exist, as in my recollection.

          I suppose elements of it exist in some ways in my own life.  I have similar entrance gates to my farm, as the barn house did.   My home rests on large acreage with a cleared area around the house, but with many trees.  An ash tray,  some tiles from France, and some art pieces from France, all given to us by barn house owners, still rest on shelves in my dining room and living room. The decor of our home was always important to me and as a result I think, two of my five children hold art degrees, and as an offshoot, are exceptional interior designers in their own homes. In summer, the front porch of my farm house has deep red geraniums, for the fragrance, as much as for the appearance. A Thermador stove with a griddle sits in my kitchen. I have to laugh when I realize that like the barn home owners, I too own a second home I don't get to as often as I would like. I have a person who looks after it as carefully as my mother did their home, and I get smart phone pictures of it periodically so that I can see all is well, and when something is changed or maintained.

          I probably don't need to remind you that some of the people, the places and even the homes your children see will shape their choices, their dreams, and their futures, possibly all their lives, just as the barn house has, all of mine.

An Unexpected Loss

                

                      I don't usually mention this, but some years ago, when I was in college, I was married.  My first husband and I were married when I had one year remaining of college, and I had attended college early.  We had a simple wedding at a beautiful old white church with red double doors, and then, we enjoyed a dinner with our friends at what is still one of my favorite restaurants, in that particular state. The restaurant and the hotel remain open and quite popular, even today.  The day after the wedding, we looked for an apartment near enough to the college. We had planned that he would work, I would finish school, and then I would work, and then he would complete his own degree. Shortly after the wedding, we found a garden apartment with one bedroom. I still remember the oak floors, the brick construction, the tiled bathroom, the generous closets, and the gas stove and oven.  It was a good rental value, even at that time.  We started with minimal furniture, and didn't gather much more in the time that we lived there. I remember wallpapering a large mural of a life-like forest to one living room wall.

                 In our early twenties, most of us don't know ourselves particularly well, let alone another person.   It didn't take a lot of time before we realized that we were very different people.   He disliked that I couldn't travel when studying for exams, and I didn't understand why he wasn't as practical as I was. He wanted to buy a new car, while I wanted to start saving for a house. He wanted to go out to a restaurant most nights, while I wanted to figure out what I could cook that would be both inexpensive and tasty. I wanted him to complete his degree, and he wanted to continue working.  We were pretty good friends, but we didn't have common goals.

                      It took a few years for us both to realize that although we were good friends and had commonalities, that our goals for the future were not the same, and that marrying had been a mistake. Neither of us found this very easy to admit, and so we saw a wonderful marriage counselor, at first with the objective of making our marriage healthier and stronger, and then eventually with the objective of figuring out how to let it go.

                      When we did decide to divorce, it was challenging. We both wanted an amicable divorce, and thought we could keep it non-adversarial, especially since there was little money between us, and because we both tried to give one another the few furnishings we'd managed to acquire, to that point. We would each keep the cars with which we had come in to the marriage. We hoped to use one attorney who would represent us both. There was no such thing as a "no fault divorce" in that state at the time, and so we were placed in the difficult position of one of us needing to sue the other for something. He eventually allowed me to sue him for abandonment. Of course, that meant that the divorce took a lot of time because he had to meet the statutory definition of abandonment.  By then, I  was making more money, and so I paid for the separation agreement and for the divorce itself.  For the most part, it was amicable. We both believed that we had each made a mistake and that we truly had different goals and objectives.  I remember that we tried hard not to blame one another.

                      In the years which followed, he moved out of state.  I eventually moved also, and married someone whose goals were more in alignment with mine.  I have never really discussed the things which caused us to end my first marriage because more than anything else, I believe you owe the person you are or were married to, silence with particular regard to your difficulties or the other person's shortcomings. I really did hope that he would find someone to whom he was better suited, as I had.   In the years which followed, as my present husband and I raised our family, my first husband and I lost touch. At some point, we stopped sending Christmas cards.   I no longer had his address, and surprisingly, he wasn't active on social media.  In the years in which I raised children, I rarely thought of him.

                       This week I learned that he has died.   I am stunned.  He was too young to have died, and I have no idea what happened.   His parents are dead, and there is no one to ask.  None of my friends still knew him.   I am not grief stricken, but I am shocked. No, I think the word is gobsmacked.   How could someone I was once married to, be dead ?    Death wasn't supposed to happen to either of us for thirty or more years.

                         I don't need to cry, but I am not sure how to move forward, either. All of a sudden the one remaining piece of antique furniture he gave me, and the one antique lamp and rocking chair have become very precious to me.   I didn't mean to divorce him and then never exchange as much as a Christmas card again.  I hoped he would marry again, and although I know he dated a college professor for some years, he never did.  Now, there is no one on Earth but me who knows of those early days in the apartment with our friends from college, and funny friends from the garden apartments. When we could, we went to New York, to museums, and fairly often to Montreal.  Those days weren't a hundred percent bad. They simply should have been a dear friendship, rather than a marriage.  I'm sorry for anything I did, knowingly or unknowingly that hurt him and perhaps made him choose never to marry again. At this moment I can't shake that perhaps I am in part responsible for his not marrying again. I hope the remainder of his life was good.  I am..........sorry.

                   

When My Books Are Sold Out on Amazon

              It has come to my attention that Amazon is sold out of one of my books, and that they claim that there is a 1-3 month wait on another two of them. If you wish to get any of these books, in softcover versions or electronic ones, you can go to the following sources:

  Title:  "Lawrence DeWolfe Kelsey: The Life of the Explorer

 This book is ALWAYS available at:

https://booklocker.com/books/9550.html


and

                  Title:   " Portsoy Woods"

   is also ALWAYS available at: 

 https://booklocker.com/books/8874.html


and

                  Title:  "Westward: The Novel"

             is ALWAYS available at:

                           https://booklocker.com/books/9981.html






Thank you !