Braydon

I.
We are all busy and in being busy we push things along the schedule we create and are often bound by the grid of the calendar. Rushing to get out of the house to get to school on time, to get to the next meeting or set one up, to start/finish work, to pick up from school, to get dinner ready, to get to bed, to start again. Everyday we try to align to one-another in a continuous flow of timings and sync points, in a pastiche of moments fixed in time; sometimes we are successful, a lot of the time not, and sometimes in being successful, we miss a lot.

Sometimes when you go somewhere you find something you were not expecting.

So, as Owen and I cruise along route 78 to New York for our Fabulous First Friday, and as we near the city, after driving for an hour, I realize he has not once wanted to play on the iPad (which I brought in case), but instead has DJ’d the entire way from his iPod, playing me every song he has that he loves.

Owen masters the art of DJ’ing in the car.

These are not songs I have much desire to hear, but he clearly not only revels in the thumping bass, but also in having me hear them with him. He taps and drums and sings and sits in meditation and I try to relax into it and not direct him to song selection or have him play music I think he should hear.

The choices were to drive through the Holland Tunnel and to our destination, or take the PATH into the city and subway. He elects to park in Hoboken and take the subway.

Owen holds the “Empire State building” in his hand. No it didn’t really work.

We arrive outside Washington Square around lunch-time.  We’re in one of the food capitals of the world, so naturally we go to McDonalds.  Sometimes in the face of overwhelming choice, you fall back on what you know.  We’re both happy with it.

We catch some jazz in the square.

We’re sitting along the wall with NYU students coming and going. As he wolfs down his bacon cheeseburger, I notice him noticing every single person going by. I say, “you like to watch the people, don’t you?” He, completely innocently, unaware and with an air of genuine curiosity, replies, “yes, especially the black girls. Their hair is all exactly the same!.” I text Heather while trying to not roll on the floor.

Casually checking out the scene.

I need coffee, so we find a coffee shop nearby. As I stand in line, he snuggles up against me. He wants a decalf mocacchino – oh my. Though he winds up not really liking it, I enjoy my espresso; he spies several velvet couches and tries out walking on across them to the delight/chagrin of folks using them.

Owen discovers NYC style coffee. He could almost be a NYU student.

II.

I’ve told Owen we’re going to see Blue Man group, in the original theater. Unless you’ve seen it, there is no real way to understand what it is – Blue Man group is really one of those things you have to “just see” to “just get.” All he knows is that it’s a show with music, drumming and guys painted blue. I know how much he is going to love it, but he has no idea.  Check out this link to YouTube – and you’ll still have no idea.

It’s a great show for kids of all ages. We saw it first in 1997 and it’s just gotten better.

We take our seats – we have amazing seats – waiting for it to start. Owen is getting nervous that it’s going to be loud; the music playing is a bit percussive. I tell him to ask the usher. He calls over a large black man with locs who greets him “hey little man.” Owen asks the following: Excuse me, can you tell me if this show will be loud? I am from Haiti and when I was in an orphanage as a baby there were a lot of gun shots outside and now that I am older I don’t like loud noises.

The usher handles so smoothly I almost wonder if he’s heard this before. He even says hey in Creole and explains he has lots of Haitian friends. He gives Owen a big smile and says, do you like loud music with a beat? That’s the kind of loud this will be. Owen visibly relaxes.

For the next 2 hours of thumping, antics, paper, marshmallows and general wild fun in an artistic sense of things, Owen is mesmerized. Sometimes laughing out loud, to the delight of everyone around, sometimes completely still and focused.

The silent Blue Man actually spoke to Owen. Hmm.

As we pass by the gift stand and after we’ve snapped pictures with the Blue Men and Owen has managed to stick his thumb onto one of their heads (to the Blue Man’s surprise and, I think, delight…it’s hard to tell with those guys), and we’re out on the street heading to dinner, I can tell Owen really wanted something to remember it by. I ask him – he says it’s nothing. He insists it’s nothing. I gently prod him – on any other day I may have gotten frustrated – and after a moment it comes out – he really wanted the drum sticks. So we go back and get them.

He asks me to hold them. With Owen, in this situation, that means he values them so much, he doesn’t want anything to happen to them – let alone that he might drop or forget them somewhere. I am not sure if my heart is breaking or filling – or maybe it’s both at the same time.

III.
We’re getting hungry so we decide to head to dinner early. But we have plenty of time. As we’re walking up Lafayette Owen stops and looks down into the grate. There beneath us are subway tracks. He wants to watch a subway go right under us. As we stand there, the rest of the city disappears. The crazy duo across the street with the drummer and bearded fellow with bunny ears on dancing, the French lady taking a bicycle rental, the students in the Starbucks, the police cars whizzing by; the only thing that exists is the grate and waiting for a subway to go by.

No he didn’t drop something, there is going to be a train under there for goodness sake!

20 minutes pass. Owen decides to give up. Just then a train not only goes by, it stops under us. A family walks by with a stroller, Owen jumps up in excitement and calls out to them – they think he’s dropped something down there – but he calls look look there’s a train! They smile. But more, they notice the train too. And I don’t think they would have otherwise. I would not have otherwise.

It’s then I realize that time has shifted for me. I am on Owen time – and that’s a very different schedule. It’s not easy to be on Owen time, but there is something – that when I actually allow myself to do it – when it’s just he and I – that is almost magical about it.

***

We head down to the subway and go to Time Square. We emerge in a different city – or it feels like different anyway. It’s overwhelming, so of course I up the ante and we go to Toys R Us. I can’t help it – he spots an AirHogs copter-thing – I get it. He is thrilled beyond belief. This is a boy who never asks for anything. Not for Christmas, not for birthday; nothing. I get it.

He resisted throwing this Angry Bird, but I had to take a picture anyway.

IV.

Heather found this Brazilian Steakhouse – Plataforma. I’ve never been to one – not a real one anyway – and Owen doesn’t know it at all. They explain how it works and then the food begins to arrive.

Green = bring me more; Red = stop, I can’t take it!

Owen has a certain zest for life – and particularly for good food that is not just difficult to describe – it’s incredibly infectious. So much so that people at other tables pick up on it. The roving wait staff really pick up on it. They are ecstatic when he flips his coaster over to green for more. In fact, they come over and give him more when it’s still red.

Thank you. Now do that again 178 more times please.

The steak is incredible. I text Heather. I don’t want her to be envious, but I just have to share it with her. Owen is going crazy for the meat. I am having the best Caipirinha I’ve had. Ever. Make that I’m having two. They make them tableside. They make Owen a non-alcoholic version. He commands me to close my eyes and he moves them around to confuse me. I– by smell – guess wrong as to which is mine – thankfully I can taste the difference. He is laughing. We toast every 2-4 minutes all night during the dinner.

Owen enjoys a child friendly version of Brazil’s national drink. Awesome.

The servers come and go, and ask if we’d like them to take our picture. The general manager comes over and chats with us – for quite a while. We get a recommendation for dessert from the two ladies who are from Brazil – they ate these as kids. Owen wants to bring part of his home – I suspect to show his brother.

I am wishing I could be like this with him everyday.

Special does not begin to describe the dinner. No – not the dinner – although that is special and I am looking for excuses for our whole family to go. “Special”…does not begin to describe the our dinner together, it’s something else entirely.

The only thing that could have made this better for Owen would have been riding a bike everywhere. However I decided a hospital visit wasn’t worth it.

V.

We leave the city, fulfilled. We’re tired.

Sometimes getting there is the point.

We go to our hotel – since that has become a mandatory part of the Fabulous First Friday – but not in the City – in NJ. And that’s ok. I am happily exhausted. Owen wants to swim. Any other day and we would not do it. But we on Owen time right now. We swim. More accurately, he swims, I soak in the hot tub. We wake and have a great buffet breakfast.

Rested.

It’s not sad to come home like it was with Kyle. It somehow seems right. Complete, or just enough. I am not sure what. But I am sure that for some people, like Owen, it’s not about the whole experience; it’s about all the moments that happen. And you can only really have those moments, when you are in someone else’s rhythm.

I. As we approach the outskirts of Gettysburg, Kyle and I notice a subtle change in the landscape. Along Baltimore Pike things feel more rural, a bit like we’re going back in time. Not exactly to the period of the Civil War – since there are restaurants and our brief home away from home – a Comfort Suites – along the road, but no longer fully Today either.

After his joyful surprise of getting to ride in the front seat for the first time (for the 2.5 hour drive) and playing Infinity Blade for much of the way, when we walk in to the hotel lobby he says – a bit to himself – “I don’t think my honey bunnies know where we are.” Later he pulled them out to lay them on the bed to make sure they are comfortable.

To Kyle’s delight, there are goldfish in a waterfall in the lobby of the hotel and to my delight we have a couch area in our room – but the biggest delight is that it’s just Kyle and Papi for our first Fabulous First Friday. We’ve done other Friday’s before, but Heather thought of this and supported making it happen – that we would embark on a series of very special, overnight First Friday’s for our children. This is a great start.

I don’t think the hotel clerk’s recommendation for the Irish Pub is the right place for my 9-year old although its reputation as a great steak place and Kyle’s love of a NY Strip almost change my mind. Instead, after a quick online search, I find a place much better for us.

Dobbin house back in the day.

When you know someone obsessed with Civil Rights, macro level conflict, the history of slavery in the US and Haiti and the Civil War, you would be remiss if you skipped having dinner in a restaurant that also has a mini-museum with an actual station on the Underground Railroad. We go to the Dobbin House in town.

Dobbin house with a happy boy standing in front.

There is something special about being in the same physical space that has been used for hundreds of years by people for public gathering and dining. There is a certain ethereal sense of things looking out from the front door and knowing that in 1863 there were hundreds of field tents across the street housing the wounded from the day’s fighting. And that there were runaway slaves hid between the floor and ceiling of the second floor. And how my son sees that.

Kyle sees where the escaping slaves hid between the floors.

But there is something truly magical about having dinner and that same Civil War, Civil Rights obsessing guy wanting to sit on your side of the table on the bench with you and talk and talk and talk. Magical and wonderful.

The steak was ok, but the company was incredible.

That and while we’re waiting for 30 min for a seat, we do whatever he wants. We walk around the outside of the house a few times. We use my phone to take a compass bearing on where the archeology dig was done in the 1990’s, we visit the gift shop and decide there is nothing there of any value, we visit the underground railroad station – again.

Although dinner is not excellent, the experience is and we walk out very happy. Amazingly, as we’re pulling away from the tavern, Kyle spies the store where we had bought his toy Civil War Soldiers this summer – of course we have to stop. Kyle is in heaven. The only thing better would have been if they also had space men – but this is a shop just for toy soldiers. We augment his collection a little – but mainly just that I was willing to turn around and go in there at 8:45 after a dinner just for him at a restaurant just for him, in a town just for him in a First Friday just for him – that is most important.

How can you not get this boy some defensive walls for his toy soldiers?

We take a quick dip in the very cold hotel pool, but mostly we play Infinity Blade together until it’s 10 – incredibly late. But – there’s a fireworks show outside we see through the trees – turns out it’s a tribute to the Medal of Honor recipients in the park.

Back in the room. No, he doesn’t have to shower now to get the chlorine off (mommy will be so mad, but oh well), but yes he will have to in the morning. Prayers, lights out, I read for a couple minutes; everything is all done.

We have fully arrived at Gettysburg and left the rest of the world behind.

The early bird gets the worm: Arrival no later than 8 AM.

II. The Gettysburg visitor center opens at 8 – an hour earlier than our Licensed Battlefield guided tour starts, but since breakfast of little hotel waffles was at 7, we get tickets to the first Cyclorama show of the day. We stand inline among the cannons, bugles and rifles. The show is outstanding – the movie, the 360 degree painting and narrative. Kyle stands mesmerized as we hear called out the names of major portions of the battle – the Copse of Trees, the Angle, and others. And in an incredibly unusual moment for Kyle, he asks no questions. He just takes it all in.

Clay, our white haired field guide who grew up in Gettysburg tells Kyle he thinks that the Civil War is a great hobby for him to have – that it kept him out of trouble as a teen ager and will do the same for Kyle. This goes over Kyle’s head, but the sense of how much Clay loves studying the battle of Gettysburg does not. Clay drives our car and pitch-perfect nails the tone for Kyle for the day. Where do we want to go? Pickett’s Charge, Little Round-Top and Culp’s Hill.

Little Round Top looking over Pickett’s Charge.

If you’re not familiar with these skirmishes, it’s ok – I wasn’t either. Not until I had to be to keep up with Kyle’s growing Civil War knowledge. Maybe it’s the “Civil War Day by Day Book” he reads regularly, but he has a staggering amount of Civil War information for a 9 year old; in my not-so-knowledgeable opinion anyway.

Kyle on Little Round Top looking toward Pickett’s charge.

Our guide has forgotten more about the Gettysburg battle than I will ever know. For him, it’s not just the town that’s a living little world, the day by day blow is almost as present as the Kentucky Fried Chicken we drive by during the description of the first day of the battle. We see a shell stuck in a building. We see bullet holes in a store where a Confederate sniper was holing up. We find out that 90% of the houses in Gettysburg were used as Field Hospitals and that current residents are strongly discouraged from sanding the floors or painting the walls since there are still blood and carvings throughout. We find out there the town had a population of 2,400, but were almost 200,000 soldiers around during the battle.

I worry that is all too much for Kyle, for any 9-year-old, but he takes it in, engaged, the gears working in his mind. We go through the seminary and see a line of US Army soldiers doing a battlefield study – albeit a very different one that we are.

Pickett’s Charge.

We arrive at Pickett’s charge. We stop and get out. We look across the field where Lee sent 12,500 men into raging gunfire. Being in that field makes it much more real. Seeing how far these young men ran – mostly to their deaths – is not lost on us. The seriousness, scale and intensity is not lost on us.

Kyle at Pickett’s Charge.

Then something really amazing happens. We’re driving along, awash in the generals, and commanders and the 1,300 monuments and plaques and the charges and retreats and hills and high-ground and Kyle has an observation. “So, basically, the Confederates lost because the Union had a stronger defense.”

Kyle discovers the key to the Union’s victory.

We have not discussed this idea at all. The guide has not hinted or offered up this theory in any way. Kyle has listened, asked questions and distilled the entire battle outcome to that one simple statement. I am not sure who is more dumbfounded, me or the guide, but we both kind of laugh out of surprise and just say yes.

Kyle offering his opinion of the Confederacy.

After we wrap up our tour and visit the amazing museum that goes through things in even more depth, it’s clear our time at Gettysburg is ending. We sit outside on a stone wall, Kyle playing with the gift spyglass he picked out and I say “so, I think we’ve done everything we can today, it’s probably time to go home.

Kyle wanted me to take this picture so mommy got to see something other than guns.

It’s one of those moments you’ll never forget. When you realize how wonderful of a time you’ve had with one of your kids and you have to return to reality. We hug and get in the car.

Kyle hangs with Lincoln.

A very Fabulous First Friday.

We go to a lot of sports events here at Lehigh. We have not been going to as many music events – particularly “classical” music events.  It’s in no small part that western art music is so darn white. Dead white (mostly male) composers, living white (mostly male) composers, white performers, conductors and audiences. It’s a bit of a bummer since there is so much awesome classical music – much of which completely informs the way we all hear music in the US today.

So, when one of Heather’s students, who is also a Gryphon (aka RA) in Sayre, and who is also black, let us know her senior recital of 20th century art song was today, there was no way we were going to miss it.

Frankly, I was concerned that our kids wouldn’t last.  I’ve tried classical/art songs with them in the car with very limited success.  And the audience expectations for live art music are absurd (and as a historical side note – sitting there, quietly dressed up with rules abou when you clap, is a pretty recent occurrence – and in my opinion one of the major reasons classical concerts are dying…but I digress), the lyrics often in foreign languages, the music in a “musical language” that  can also be a bit foreign to our ears.

But Arielle Leacock did an amazing job tonight.  Her diction in French and Italian was gentle but precise. After loosening up on the first song cycle, her pitch was spot on and her soprano filigree was executed  beautifully. Her voice is not large, but she makes good use of that characteristic and doesn’t push it – she makes you lean in, listen, pay attention and grab each word.

And our kids did just that.  Though Meera said a few times to Heather “…what did she really say?!?!” when it was in French (and those around us chuckled at that), the boys sat enraptured through the entire thing.

To see this beautiful young black woman in a gorgeous pink dress pull off a senior recital of 20th century Spanish, French, Italian and American art music with nothing but piano accompaniment.  That was really amazing.

{By Braydon}

Some of the recent questions that came in just needed to be answered. Thank you for asking (you know who you are)!

Q: Do you see changes in the munchkins that you attribute to exposure to more adults/college age young adults?

A: Since they are evolving and growing so rapidly, it’s really hard to know what the influences are. They are having a ton of interaction with students all the time, so there must be an influence. Wait – I think the influence is on the students!  

We tend to say that the Lehigh students have really “stepped up to the plate”, and they really have.  At the same time, our kids have too. They have begun to get a good handle on social interaction and social boundaries in a way that we didn’t have before. Even in their extreme social-ways, they don’t run up to everyone they see to interact, whereas they did before. They are more cognizant of their interactions and the limitations of what is appropriate.

Similarly, they have become ultra-aware of how much the students work/study. When we first came on campus we thought there was going to be a lot more hanging out, down time and partying, but we are constantly struck by how much Lehigh students study and work (academically). So much in fact, that when asking students if they want to do something (play basketball, watch a movie, hang out, whatever), they now ask first if they have to study or if they have time.

At the same time, they seem to be more free to be kids. Maybe because Heather and I are clearly so much older than the students (how was it that 40 became old???), and they are clearly so much younger than the students, but whatever it is, there is no one-upmanship on who is older, or cooler or anything. Which I think is very freeing.

One of the many times K & O get some bball on with our neighbors.

Q: One “management” area I’ve been watching for is an explanation of how you dealt with your photographs. Are they on DVDs, on a hard-drive, in boxes, with back-ups elsewhere? Did you reduce your collection as well before you packed, given the transitory nature of moving and storing for periods of time?

A: After 2002, we went fully digital with all our photography, and we have a pretty robust backup system for all our 100,000 digital images (we could do better digital house-cleaning I suppose!). However, before 2002, we had all normal photos, in boxes, in albums and in their original paper-1-hour-development sleeves, and we had to make some pretty tough decisions when we moved. We kept all our wedding photos and some key sentimental photos, but we tossed – literally – hundreds of photos.  We felt it wasn’t worth scanning and archiving them – often we found we didn’t even know what they were photos of – so why bother even archiving them?  Of the ones we kept, some wound up in our storage unit in a couple boxes of memorabilia, some (like our wedding photos) came with us in the apartment. We didn’t really become massive photographers until we had kids…which I suspect is pretty typical.

Over the years I have spent a ton of time on our technical setup (which in recent years has finally become far more simple), and if there is interest, I’ll outline that in a separate post.

The Lehigh “sculpture garden”. This photo just needed a little artistic help.

Q. I was just wondering if you would be writing any more about how you helped the kids come to terms with the idea of letting Quinn and Hudson go prior to the move? Given how you described it, “We know it was the right decision for the CATS, but WE miss them a lot” did you feel there were parallels to adoption and if so, did that impact how you discussed it with your bambinos both at the time and now?

A. I am sure it will keep coming up on the blog as we continue to figure things out. And lately I’ve noticed quite a bit of discussion of wanting pets (and interestingly, not just from the kids, so I am not sure what that foretells!).  When we originally started talking about it with the kids, I don’t think we really drew any lines to adoption, but we were very worried about how they would take it that the cats were going to take an “extended vacation” in NH.

Amazingly, they all handled it really well. I don’t know if it’s their general ability to just roll with things or what, but they have not really had much difficulty.

Tangentially, for the kids whole life we’ve noticed that when we get in the car for a road trip, they are the most settled of almost any time. I think it’s that they just happy we are all together, noone is going anywhere without everyone else and they don’t have to worry about separation. I believe that for these three, that as long as they have their brother, sister and parents, then anything else is pretty much a non-issue.

Little miss with Quinn at the lake this summer. Of all of us, she misses the kittens the most, but she’s alright.

Q. Just curious, are there any real downsides/things to be wary of when a family like yours (with young children) considers moving on campus? Do you have nightime fire drills? Or rowdy neighbour issues? Or other things to contend with/bear in mind?

A. As much as I tend to see only the upside, there are things that are less than ideal – especially with kids.  Fortunately they only do day-time, 2x/year fire-drills (which is not how I remember some late night drills in -10 degree weather in college), and the neighbors have been very quiet. But we do have to worry about smoking (and there are a variety of kinds of smoking of course) and drinking, although not so much where we live, but in generally on a campus.  The kids also must have their ID’s with them anytime they go outside (so they can get back in). We have also set the rules that they can’t go by themselves into anyone’s room alone. There is no banging on the ceiling or floor (anyone in an apartment can get that, but in a single family home you don’t realize how much stomping there is going on at any given moment).

Having just come off spring break I’ve noticed when students are here, there is quite a bit more (often unconscious)  pressure to be “on”. Keeping kids quiet and in-line is more on our minds. You can’t quite ever just totally let it “all hang out”, if you know what I mean.

The beautiful Lehigh stained glass in Linderman library.

{By Braydon!}

Let me surely call out this truth: while we have downsized, others have downsized (and done other radical things) even more than we have. And for much of the world “downsized” is the way life has always been and having less is not desirable.  In the western, privileged world, needing and choosing to downsize is quite a luxury. And maybe in part our attempt to rid ourselves of some of our material overhead is a tacit recognition of our place in the world and what’s right.

That said, we still have a couple cheats (a small storage area in the basement for living items and a Units/Pod storage unit for stuff we think we’d want when eventually move on). So it’s with that acknowledgement and admission that I reveal our downsizing effort.

—

All in all, we gave away around 3/4’s of our material possessions. And we went from 3,200 sqf to 700 sqf of living space.  After 9 years of living in a large house and going from 0 to three children and the baby years of their life, we had collected a vast amount of stuff.

It was weird though. If you’ve looked at photos of our old house on this blog, it didn’t feel like we had a ton of stuff. We worked hard to reduce clutter and keep things very clean and clear.  We didn’t have lots of knick-knacks around and we continually got rid of outdated, broken or otherwise unused items.  But, it turned out, we had vast amounts of stuff.  Just stuff.  And more stuff.  Stuff that defies definition, but some how accumulates where you don’t realize it’s hiding.

Stuff, stuff everywhere and not a notion how. And ours was not extreme stuff either.

So, after we had mapped out exactly what we would be moving into our new space (down to the inch, the placement of decorations and the items that would sit on shelves and everywhere else, we had to go through and get rid of things.

The first wave was the hardest by far. There were many many waves, but the first felt like a real barrier to walk through. Or a mountain of stuff to climb.  We did that first wave in full spirit of doing it but later realized that it was only half-hearted. We meant well, but it was just not easy.   And that was just mostly the “junk”.  Things that were broken, or old electronics (which I had a real tendency to keep and keep and keep and horde), or old clothes (like 2o year old college t-shirts – what’s up with that?) or broken toys (which we had kept since the boys had played with them for a while when they were 3).

Maybe it’s because I am inherently a packrat. I have always really struggled with getting rid of things. I have kept every card that Heather has given me since the very first one she gave me when we were dating in college (which could be sweet, but when it takes up a box, it’s just kind of weird). I kept notebooks from high-school and college. I kept old clothes. I kept old guitar picks. I kept old patches from awards and paper awards themselves. I kept old books and magazines, and maps and notes and trinkets and my old toys (that sadly I never let the boys play with because I was worried they would break them, only later to have them not be interested and find myself donating them to someone else – I really regret that). I kept nuts and bolts and screws and wires and cables and everything.  And yet somehow it didn’t seem like too much.

But then after wave one, we looked around and realized we had a looooong way to to. So we embarked on Wave 2.  Then Wave 3, and Wave 4, and 5 and 6.  And I don’t know how many waves we really did, but it went on and on for months.

We took the seats out of my minivan (aka the “Rox Box”) and filled it 9 times. And donated it all to a local charity/thrift store that serves the local community. Then we rented a 14′ U-Haul and filled that and made a huge donation (although 2 couches did go to my office).  Then we set up a day for anyone who wanted to come and take anything else that we had not earmarked to keep ourselves.

It was like a tidal wave of purging had come over us.

And as we went, it got easier. And it made more sense. And it felt lighter, and clearer and more focused.  And a few waves into it, we looked back at the first few waves and almost laughed at how we had wanted to hold on to certain things.  I remember going through the closet in our bedroom (again) and finding things I thought I couldn’t part with, that now I couldn’t believe I would have ever held on to.

***

The very last thing we did was go through the closet in the basement. The one place that had all family items, memorabilia, photographs, momentos, collectables and things we felt we couldn’t part with them. We had been saying that we needed to get to it, but I think we really did need to do that one last.  Had we not gone through all the waves previously, we never would have been able to go through that last one.

We sat on the floor for several hours, pouring through memories and picking things that we wanted to keep.  We supported each other on what should go and what should stay.  Things from our parents, grand parents, great grandparents, and great-great grandparents. Things from own childhoods, things we remembered, things we didn’t. Lost friends reappeared, lost achievements and hopes and dreams floated by in a sea of paper and cardboard boxes. Our lives seemed to unfold before us as we pared through the chaff.

***

And then we were done.

And the moving truck was packed, the storage unit was packed. Then the home we had became a house and was empty.

It felt weird. Giving it away felt weird. Seeing our friends excitedly take away our furniture felt weird.

And it felt really good.

And although we can recall some of our material possessions and memories along with them, we have not missed our stuff at all.

I believe we are now different people than we were before, and it feels right.

{By Braydon!}

I thought I would do a “Top ten awesome things about living on campus”. Then I thought it would be “Top ten things about radically downsizing”.  Then I realized that I could have sliced up a Top Ten list about 100 ways (logistic improvements, finance changes, community engagement, environmentalism, work life balance, etc).

I guess that’s just how life is – refuses to be easily categorized.

So, here are the 10 Ten things I love about our crazy living situation.

1. Yard work and Maintenance – better than I could ever do:  In our old life, I had to worry about grass mowing, spring/fall clean up, gutter cleaning, snow removal, tree issues, pool care, weeding.  Door hinges, window screens, fence repair, garage door issues, water system problems, heating and cooling systems, pool pumps, roof repairs were concerns. Basically everything that comes with owning a house – and in our case a rather large house. Of course if we rented an apartment that would mostly go away, but here on campus it’s all done by professionals who do better than either I  or the people we used to hire could or even in an apartment complex.
2. Massive financial savings. Mortgage, utilities, services, repairs, reduced driving, overall reduced stuff. Do I need to elaborate?
3. 9 vs 110 lightbulbs.  In our old house we had 110 lightbulbs. Now we have 9 light bulbs. Incredible electricity reduction. Granted, we don’t pay for it, but that’s not the point.  Have you counted how many you have lately? And it’s not just that, it’s heat, air conditioning, cable tv, etc.
4. Three washing machines and dryers.  Family of 5, being able to do 3 loads of laundry in the time it takes to do 1.  Awesomeness.
5. A vibrant, living community.  You might not think of students on campus as a community per se, or if nothing else a transient community, but it really is a community.  We live here together, we play together, we work through challenging world issues together.  After having lived out in a country setting with little interaction in our community and honestly, a bit of lonlieness, it’s incredible to have an engaged group of people around who you interact with daily and build meaningful relationships.
6. Proximity to lots of things:  work (2-5 min drive or 15 min walking), restaurants (2-5 min), shopping (2-10 min), airport (12 min), lots of other activities (2-20 min). It’s less drive time, less gas and less of an obstacle to life.
7. Overall reduction in all material things.  Not only did we get rid of 2/3-3/4 of all our earthly possessions when we moved, we also just buy less now. A lot less. It’s not just that we don’t need to fill our space with stuff, it’s that we actively have to keep at bay the purchasing of things. I went into a Lowes a couple months ago and said “gosh, there is nothing here I could buy even if I wanted to”.
8. Eating in the dining hall and having it be fun.  It’s not just that Heather’s cooking load is lower. When we eat in the dining halls, it’s like being at a restaurant with 100 of your friends.  There is no pressure to be on your perfect behavior, you get to have great conversations together or with others all over a really good meal.
9. Living in a smaller space is just good.  Everyone is closer together physically and emotionally. Our rhythms are more noticeable, how we dovetail into each other is more pronounced and it feels good.  When our kids are playing around us they don’t feel far away and that feels really good.
10. Reconnecting to my wife and kids.  All that logistical and financial overhead and stress, the missing social interaction, the energy it required to sustain our own little community, the energy it took to psychically fill a large house all took its toll. Heather is much less stressed, I am much less stressed, our kids are much closer to us. This unique solution has brought me back to my family and I deeply appreciate it.

In the months leading up to moving, we noticed over and over again, that our whole family would all be in one room in our large house.  We’d all be in the kitchen, or the living room, or the family room, or the bedroom or the dining room, or the garage but we were always in the same 200 square feet within a 3200 square foot house. That is, except when we put the kids to bed – then they were upstairs and we were downstairs. They seemed so far away. Now our life is tightly together in so many ways.

Now our family feels tight and mightily alive. There is a lot that contributes to that sense.