On Sunday, we dropped off our boys with my parents bright and early. Actually, Dylan dropped them off, and I got right to work. Originally, we had hoped to squeeze in a bike ride while the kids were gone. And then it became just a gym trip, which then was whittled down to a morning jog. Which then became no exercise at all. Because we had our work cut out for us. It was time to unpack the guest room closet, dressers and desk.
I'm sure you'll believe me when I tell you that we had stuff stacked almost to the ceiling, and you could hardly open the door to the closet. Yes, that is the contents of just one closet, and that's not even all of it. Yet again, we dropped off another truck full of donations, and our trash can is overflowing. It was a lot of work, but it feels so, so good. I'm confident that I won't be putting myself in this situation again, hopefully ever.
Before I go any further, though, let's talk about the fact that I'm a recovering hoarder. I found an entire drawer full of Saguaro High School t-shirts. Also, a boombox with a CD and tape player, a discman, CDs and cassettes, my pager from eighth grade, a Nokia phone from high school and an Apple Newton. And many, many, many artifacts from my childhood. It was fun to revisit these memories, but I've learned that we don't need material things to hang on to our past. So, off they all went. Memories are fun, but life is about the right now.
As we work toward getting out of this house, it's starting to feel like the end of an era in a very, very good way. I don't even know the 27-year-old person that I was when we moved in here. Back then, I didn't know anything about anything. In the last eight years, we've endured our share of heartache and hardship. Not an unusual amount of the tough stuff. But just enough. And of course, all the good things, too. I went to school for a lot of years, but I've never learned more about life than I have since we got married and moved into this house.
We've hated jobs, lost jobs, quit jobs and started new ones. We've taken turns being unemployed, sometimes by choice and sometimes not. We got our first dog and our second. Had our first child and our second. (How this can up-end a life is a post all on its own.) Along the way, we've had health issues and lost a couple of pregnancies. There were the string of tenants from hell that lived in our condo. We've been separated by geography a lot of the time. We've been bored and busy. We've made a few good decisions and plenty of bad ones. We took some cool vacations, spent time with friends and family and developed new interests. We've learned to take better care of our minds and bodies. Just like anyone else, we've had some hard hits and a few lucky breaks. And with that, I've thickened my skin and learned to respond to disappointment with grace. I stand a little taller and feel a little prouder. I know that everyone else is out there fighting the good fight, and we're all just doing the best that we know how. Every day, we figure out a little bit more than we knew yesterday.
I always tell Dylan that the 40s will be our glory decade. We'll still feel good enough to do all the things we enjoy. Our kids will be school-aged, and hopefully we'll be in career situations that are tolerable if not fulfilling. We'll be well-established adults, and that will feel good.
But, as we all know, life can be unpredictably short, and nothing is a guarantee. And, just as life isn't meant to be lived in the past, neither is it meant to be lived in the future, and so I'll choose to focus on the right now. It will be a tough year, but with an end game in mind, it won't be so bad. I'm just so glad to be who I am, where I'm at, and on this journey with the three boys that I call my family. We have so much good to celebrate. So, so much. I am tired, I have more lines on my face to show for it than I did at 27, but right here and right now, I am so much better and so very grateful.
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