Identity Reduction
The thing you’re supposed to do when getting ready to sell your house is to extract as much personality as possible. The goal is for new people to see your house as THEIR home, not your home. I get that. Makes sense.
For the past two weeks I’ve been erasing traces of me.
Yesterday I removed the string of white lights hanging over the kitchen sink, providing extra light whenever I washed dishes. I also dragged my giant Monopoly rug out to the garage. I removed the singing nun hand puppet that squatted on a bottle of Jack Daniels atop the fridge. Last week I took down hand-made picture frames. One frame captured a great civil war re-enactment: my brother and I represented North vs. South at a Minnesota State Fair booth. He looks like a neophyte, 18-year-old kid from Pennsylvania. I look like an angry, stupid redneck. It’s perfect. Of course, too much personality.
And that has made me a little sad.
I had no idea how much of my identity was tied up in this house. Well, that’s not true exactly. I do have some idea…I wrote a poem that touched this connection (a few lines at least) several weeks ago. But it’s so strange wandering around looking at my beloved family and friends thinking, ‘Yup…they have to go. Too much personality.’
Today, Easter Sunday, I spent a great deal of time in the basement.
(Sidenote: what is it with me and that damn basement on holidays? I spent most of New Year’s Day in the basement too! Good God…what on earth was I doing on Valentines Day??)
I spent the day cleaning and packing boxes. I threw away 11 enormous Hefty bags full of junk today. Eleven! I threw away extra wallpaper left to me by the previous owners of the house. I threw away leftover vegetable drawers and trays from the refrigerator that I removed when I first moved in. At the time I thought ‘I may want these back when I sell the house,’ so I kept them. I looked at them today and thought, ‘Why are you here?’
Oddly, the hardest items for me to throw away (or rather…recycle) were emtpy, cardboard boxes. Whenever I get a package through the mail, or purchase something in a sturdy, well-made box, I squirrel it away on one of my basement shelves using the logic, ‘You never know when you’ll need a good box.’
(Doesn’t that sound like something a Grandpa would say? Lecture you on the value of a ‘good box?’)
It’s not a bad idea to keep a few boxes around in case you need to mail something, I suppose, but I had about 50. Who needs 50 empty boxes (of varying sizes) ‘just in case?’ And I know that number veers closer to 80 at times; at least twice a year I’ve initiated a culling whereby I slash and recycle 20-30 boxes.
Those boxes meant something to me.
So here I am, Easter night, puzzling out what those 50 empty boxes meant. They represented a form of security, somehow. They were the promise of gifts yet to send, exciting packages to mail. Hmmmmm. ‘Squirreling’ … I used that word earlier in this post and somehow that word really strikes me as appropriate as the ‘right word.’ Squirrels forage, plan, fortify. Keeping those boxes really was a squirrel-like activity: fortifying against the long “box-less winter” so that I wouldn’t get caught without having enough.
I think that’s it. Worried about having ‘enough.’ Those boxes represented an idea that ‘there may not be enough later…’ so I’ll over-indulge right now. Hmmmmm. I wonder if I do that with anything else in my life? (Food, TV, internet, desserts…)
This Year of Wonders, as I call it, really is my chance to operate with less of a safety net. Well, I’ll always have a safety net in loving family and friends. But less of a material safety net. No physical long-term ‘home’ that I will call mine. And that scares me. It really frightens me.
I walk around this house, losing its very Edmond-like identity and I wonder…who will I be without my charming bungalo, with its X-men bathroom and quirky paintings. Is the personality in the house or in me?
Who will I be?
Will I be okay without 50 empty cardboard boxes to make me feel safe?
Asking these questions brings up fear. And when I look at the picture of my brother and I and I am less afraid.
