A new couch, two buffets
and a hutch. Desks, tables, shelves and artwork. Televisions, stereos and other
appliances. I gave them away. Area rugs. Gave them away. Two dining room sets
and more furniture. Gave it all away.
Dishes, cutlery,
crockery, boxes of stationery, music albums and boxes of who knows what. Boxes
under the bed, boxes in closets, boxes in the cubby hole, under the stairs.
Christmas wrap, decorations, party supplies. I shed it all, amazed at how good
it felt; like a thousand anchors severed so this ship can finally sail again.
I kept my bed and books
and comfy chair and select few works of art: not the priciest ones, not the
stuff elegantly framed; not the original oils. Just the images I most liked
looking at; the stuff that reminded me of the life I wanted. I kept enough
clothes, some mementos and gifts from loved ones.
To my neighbor I gave
the bamboo plant I had bought to serve as centrepiece for a dinner party, a
thing that afterwards, I had not expected to survive my neglect. And when I saw
it there in the neighbor’s window, front and centre among her many plants; this
ignored thing still living and now appreciated… well… it put a cheer in my
heart and a tear in my eye.
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