In Exchange

It was time. Time to stride out as a friend told me years ago. I had confined myself to the sound of rustling packing pager, the scratch and screech of packing tape ~ fitting things into boxes like pieces of a puzzle. But for everything there is a time. Familiar words set to music, a wisdom that shouldn’t be ignored.

It was a struggle. Getting my boots on, my jacket on, finding my key, locking the door. But then I felt the cool evening breeze ruffle my hair. As I approached the lake, gaggles of geese ~ brazen adults and skinny fuzzy teenagers ~ ranged across a lawn, foraging through the grass, drinking from puddles of rainwater by the curb. It was a fair exchange and a much needed one. 

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Pelicans In Flight

Pelicans!

Soaring, circling 

grand slow swoops

showing me the glistening white 

of amazing wing spans

An exciting surprise ~ but

my cell phone was in the house!

when I returned ~ 

the white of their wings was turned away,

but still so very amazing………..!

“,,Nature’s prime favourites were the Pelicans; High-fed, long-lived, and sociable and free.”

    ~ James Montgomery

 

Some Call it Clutter

Escaped the cull.

We pack and carry with us so much stuff. Big items of furniture, clothes and toys are obvious and very heavy. There was that Kirby vacuum cleaner that did everything that I bought 30 years ago. It was excellent for rug shampooing as well as vacuuming. Until two years ago, I carried it with me from Texas to Kelowna to Victoria. Ruthlessness, seldom a quality I embrace, met my heavier, slower friend. Informed that parts were fewer and farther away, it remained in the closet. Before coming to Regina, my faithful friend went to a Junk collector. I had to close my eyes for that one.

It’s the little things that are more interesting. For instance, why have the bottle brushes been relegated to the back of the junk drawer? And will I really use all the little yellow twist ties from at least three packages of sandwich bags? How long have those batteries been in that drawer? Do they even have power any longer? (They are still all good) What about the two rolls of doggie doo-doo bags? I haven’t had a dog for absolutely years, and my grand-dogs I seldom see anymore. But you never know, I might need those bags again ~ some day. I found only one key. No idea what it was for, but it looked like a key to a door? Maybe? There is plant food and lightbulbs, scotch tape (in three separate drawers), and brown furniture markers.

Each of these big and little things has had their own purpose. A future need, a future project, a back up or maybe just a want to. Throwing things out has never been easy for me. Learned behaviour? I suppose so. At the same time, I don’t want to just store things. My great-aunt Elsie told me that having something just to store didn't make sense. Some advise I've tried to follow, not always successfully.

In this disposable world, it has been too easy to collect stuff and then store it. In junk drawers, basements, closets or, sad to say, acres of storage units. Learning to not save so much stuff has been an ongoing challenge. Divesting myself of pieces of my life has never been easy ~ except maybe for those little bundles of yellow twist ties.

“For it is not merely the trivial which clutters 

our lives but the important as well.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh