Kitchen Cupboard
Nostalgia Lingers There
When we first listed our house in Nevada, I started the year-long process of going through thirty-three years of living and deciding what would move along with us. Over those years, the house we’d first bought had changed considerably. It had grown.
You will notice in the first picture I’m out there, pushing a wheelbarrow. Gardening, harvesting, and preserving vegetables and fruit has been a huge part of my life, through raising children and grandchildren, and building a career that helped us build a bigger home.
The addition/remodeling took many months, and included much in the way of storage. The big laundry room had a wall of cabinets, and the garage did, too. Every closet had builtins. One wall of the family room was an immense bookcase. Those thirty-three years filled all of them to the brim, and not just with stuff. With memories.
We had planned to downsize considerably, and no way was I going to move all that stuff halfway across the country, anyway. Plus, it was in the back of my mind that I didn’t want to make my children have to eliminate it one day in the future, so I started giving stuff away.
Clothes. So many that didn’t fit or work for some other reason. Dresses and t-shirts and jeans and shoes and… so many. Most were easy. But then there was the dress I wore on my first date with my husband. (Too short.) The raincoat I wore on my first trip to visit my editor in New York City. (Too tight.) The formal dress I bought for when I won the Printz some day. (Never did.)
Books. Boxes and boxes of books. Especially children’s books I’d collected from the time my grown children were toddlers. Picture books. Chapter books. Middle grade and young adult and nonfiction books. Many signed by author friends and peers. Books are heavy, too heavy to move easily. I gave them to schools for their libraries, and helped build a library on a reservation.
Photos. Albums and albums. I digitized most of them, carefully packed the framed ones that meant the most to hang on new walls. Artwork, some valuable (an original John Lennon), some invaluable (drawn or painted by my kids). I couldn’t part with most of that, and it took up much room in the moving van.
Power tools. Garden tools. Hand tools. Hoses. Bikes. Skis. Backstops. Dog houses. Dog crates. Dog beds. Dog toys. Was it more efficient to take them, or buy new on the far end? Some were pretty well used. Some we’d quit using already. But might we need them again?
And then, the kitchen. Small appliances. Pots and pans and cookie sheets. Dishes, many mismatched. Silverware, knives, spatulas, wooden spoons. Did we need to move them all? What about the garlic press with the peeling paint? How about that hand can opener, and how many corkscrews were necessary? Oh, the glassware and coffee mugs, collected over three decades.
I sorted through it all. Gave away many wine glasses and coffee cups. Decided not to try and move dozens of canning jars. They found a good home in Nevada, and I’ve had to replace them here. But I’m not sure they would’ve arrived unbroken.
Despite everything I handed off, more came with us than we needed. The top shelf of one of my kitchen cupboards here was loaded with coffee mugs, many collected from book events or school visits. This morning I decided to let some of them go to someone who might use them. Going through them lifted many memories. A few I just can’t part with.
The Polar Express mugs represent three years of riding the Santa Train with my kids/grandkids. I have another set that I’ll send to my daughter, who rode along those years, with her children.
Those three are self-explanatory. Yes, I realize the ones on the left (it’s a short stack) are plastic. Beer cups from the 1990 World Series game we went to. Oh, and I just noticed I should probably dust that top shelf.
Moving to Missouri has been hard in many ways. There are good things about living here. But almost every day, Nevada memories intrude.
