Goodbye, 1975!

If you look carefully, you can see the remnants of my red and green carpet, which bit the dust this week!

It's 4:30 a.m. on a cooler than normal July morning in the rolling hills of Tillman, Missouri, and I'm thinking about how my life has changed over the last 35 years...

It's very quiet in the house, and I'm wondering if my stomach just growled...or if that's the hooting of the barred owl that my daughter heard several nights ago?

My black cat Tybalt is roaming the living room, looking out dark windows and creeping me out.

We built this house in 1975, when my oldest child was barely a year old. I know that the neighbors thought we were crazy. Why did we need four bedrooms for a family of three?

Well, my husband knew what he was doing. By 1983, all the bedrooms were full. Our daughter took the third one, filling it with stuffed animals and Barbie dolls.

The house was full of activity in those days--birthday parties, children spending the night, kids racing up and down the stairs with toys, my two sons challenging their younger sister to a "tag team wrestling match," in which she was given a big stuffed raccoon as a partner...

Over the years, one child after another left for college and moved out on their own, starting a their own families. My daughter was the last to go, leaving me seven years after her father's death.

There followed a silent time when my two cats were my only companions, keeping me company through the long days and nights, as I graded papers and made out lesson plans, ate TV dinners, and wrote stories for the newspaper, cats sitting on my lap during ice storms, when tree limbs crashed in the darkness.

Yes, I admit it--I let the house go. It just seemed to be too much effort to clean out closets and sort through the growing accumulation of "stuff" that a person collects over the years.

A month ago, my life took another turn, as conditions changed. They often do, don't they?

My daughter returned, and I find myself catapulted from 1975 to the present.

Carpet in the living room--gone!

Carpet in the upstairs bathroom--gone!

Carpet in my son's old bedroom--gone!

Old gold carpet on the stairs--gone!

Plaid carpet in the "green room"--gone! The floor crew literally tossed the pieces out an upstairs window!

We have cleaned out every closet in this house, carting off volumes of accumulated "stuff" that has hidden in corners and cabinets and drawers for close to 40 years. I am amazed at the things I've hung onto. I've had to sit for hours, sifting through piles of papers.

The rule seems to be that I must justify each item I save from the dumpster and the charity bin.

"What's the story behind this, Mom?" my daughter will ask.

If I can tell a sentimental story about the item, I can keep it--provided we find a good place.

The most outlandish and useless item I've saved from the trash bin over the years--a small plastic lab kit that I used 33 years ago to determine that I was pregnant with a baby girl!

So, life takes another turn...