Is It Your Turn Yet?

Is It Your Turn Yet?
May 2010

“The Stress of Moving”


As many of you know, my wife and I have raised our family on a small, gentleman’s farm on the Milo Road. It has been a wonderful place to raise our children, but we realized a long time ago, that it was too big for two people to live out their lives in. My daughter and partner, Hillary Caruso, is now raising her family and the farm is the perfect place to do so.

Recently, we built a smaller house in the woods on property that backs up to the farm, and Hillary and Joe have now moved into the farm. Building our new house was very enjoyable. Many people will tell you how stressful building a house is, but we had a terrific experience with a great general contractor, Gary Killam, and all of the sub contractors we selected, we have known and dealt with successfully over the past 23 years, and that has been a pleasure working with them, as well.

The problem was when the final day came to move… all the “stuff” accumulated over 35 years into what we now wanted to be a very organized, smaller house. That is where the stress started. It is amazing how much “stuff” we all accumulate over the years. I filled four large boxes with pictures of the family growing up that we never got around to putting in albums, or even cataloguing. The stress starts when memories of the good times meet up with the reality of not wanting or having the room to move the accumulated "stuff". My tendency was to bring it all over and find a corner in the basement and stack it all, but the kids vetoed that plan as they said they never want to have to deal with all of it when we are old. So, hopefully one of you wants a very sentimental lobster trap table (being sold in the Kiwanis Auction/Church Fair) from our early years in Iowa where we would think about Maine while watching television in our mobile home. There is also a lamp that I made Beth when I was in high school from the base of an old oil lantern, and other such “treasures” from our past…

The memories of one’s life have many physical reminders which are hard to let go of. We all deal with the practicality at some time in our life, of allowing the memories to be in our mind and not in our attic. I’m hopeful that each of you can more easily determine which items are best let go of, and which items must be kept for someone else, at a later time, to dispose of…

This is the first day of the rest of your life.