by Phyllis McCrossin
I was recently asked how to get ready for a life on the road.
There a multitude of things that have to be done – the legal things like a permanent address (the Secretary of State will mail your documents to a P.O. Box, but you still have to have a physical address), auto insurance, life insurance, health insurance, prescription plans, cell phone plans, Internet access, etc.
But probably one of the biggest obstacles to hitting the road for a nomadic lifestyle is parting with personal treasures.
I am a sentimental person. So getting ready to purge my home of things I couldn’t take with me was difficult.
The trivet that was hanging on the wall next to the kitchen window was a Christmas gift to my mother in 1965 from Winifred Sal a member of the Women’s Guild at Haven Reformed Church in Hamilton. Mrs. Sal was also one of my Catechism teachers.
The print hanging on my living room wall above Mom’s recliner was one Mom had in her guest room in their last apartment.
There were creamers in my creamer collection that were given to me as gifts from special people… the list was endless.
But there is a limit to my sentimentality and after trying to eliminate some of my “treasures” I realized my memories were better than my possessions.
I had a set of Mom’s china that was given to her by an aunt when Mom and Dad were married. Mom kept the set in the cupboard above the washer and dryer in our kitchen. Every Thanksgiving she would take it out, wash the dust off it and use it for our Thanksgiving meal.
I think I used it a total of four times before I gave it to my niece. Mom’s silver-plate, (next best silverware) along with my sister Donna’s dishes, were given to our granddaughter for her first apartment.
In the past nine years, my two remaining sisters and I have lost our parents and a sister. The three of us have cleaned, purged and set aside many, many mementos. And slowly, slowly we have decided what is important to keep and what we could let go. It wasn’t always easy.
My younger sister and I held a garage sale after our older sister passed away. We sold a lot of Donna’s things along with some of Mom’s possessions. There was a red glass oil lamp that Mom would use as a centerpiece on the kitchen table from Thanksgiving through the Christmas holiday. My younger sister and I had purchased it for Mom from the local Variety Store in Hamilton when we were quite young. I think it might have been a birthday present.
As we watched the new owner walk down the driveway with Mom’s oil lamp, my sister said softly to me, “Goodbye Mom’s oil lamp.” Neither one of us cried, but I think we both wanted to.
The thing is, no one else can share our memories. That lamp could sit on my kitchen table (if I had one), or my sister’s mantle and we could tell our children, “That was Grandma’s lamp. We bought it for her from the Variety Store in Hamilton when we were little.”
The kids would say, “That’s nice Mom.” But it would not hold the same memories it held for us. One would have to have been there to hear the screen door at the Variety Store creak open and slam shut. One would have to have been there to hear the floorboards squeak as you walked across the store.
One would have to have been there to feel the excitement as the lamp was lifted from the display window and placed in a box to take home. One would have had to have seen our kitchen table with the lamp glowing in the darkness after the dishes were done and we had all retired to the living room to watch television.
Otherwise, it is simply “Grandma’s lamp that Mom and her sister bought for her as a birthday present.” It is the memories and not the thing itself that holds sentimentality.
And I am well aware that our memories are not always ours to keep. Our mother’s memories faded long before her body gave way to age.
So in the fall of 2018 it came time to purge our home of “stuff.” King and I were finally ready to take the plunge and move into our 19-foot (from hitch to bumper) travel trailer, leaving our brick and mortar home in the capable hands of a new owner. Of course we come back to West Michigan every summer. King is not ready to give up golfing with our sons.
I’m not certain if purging one’s possessions is therapeutic or an act of desperation. On day one of my purge I donated a box full of craft supplies, purses, clothes and shoes; I ruthlessly dumped stuff into the dumpster, and boxed up a few, small treasures.
My goal was to pare it all down to be able to fit everything into a closet-sized storage unit. If the kids wanted any of the furniture, they could have it. They didn’t.
I posted a lot of our furniture on Facebook Marketplace. When a social worker called and said she was furnishing a home for a client, I gave everything to her.
I may sound as though I had this all figured out and was ready to commit to the new journey, but I must confess, there were days when I wondered if, instead, I should have been committed. While I read a lot of blogs about people who travel full time and live in their $65,000 travel trailers, that wasn’t and isn’t exactly what King and I are doing. As usual we were “flying by the seat of our pants,” as Mom would have said. (Meaning we had no hard and fast plans at all. Two years later we still don’t).
But to be honest, King and I tried doing what is the norm. We tried to be the normal, all-American, apple-pie, money in the bank, save for retirement family. We were miserable failures.
After 40-some years of semi-normalcy, it was time for a little adventure. Were we ready? There is no such thing as ready. There is only now. And now seemed pretty right. So far it’s worked.
