Point of View: Possibility, Please

    The workers have just left, leaving us with a pristine room at the end of the hall, a room that had long been overstuffed with all manner of things — a log bed, a dark, ponderous chest of drawers, a ratty light-green rug, and a closet so bursting at the seams that the unanchored sliding closet doors angled several inches outward when shut.

    We thanked them profusely for their good work, stifling our desire to tug at their sleeves so that we could direct their attention to the many other things here that need fixing. “This house is falling down around our heads!” I said, which probably hastened even more their departure.

    They were ready to move on, and so are we. It’s fine to have lived so long, but the downside is the stuff that inevitably piles up over the years and years. Periodic purges, such as we’ve just undergone, must be undertaken, otherwise we’d overdose on our possessions. I’m glad I’m not much of a sentimentalist, not one to cling (except to Mary), always ready to give at the dump.

    My brother-in-law got the ball rolling, finally making good a few weeks ago on his promise last fall to dismantle the bed frame for transport to the house near Gore Mountain that he’s begun to rent out. We told him it was a queen, which was fine, he said, inasmuch as he had a queen-size mattress and box spring up there.

    He found out after spending the better part of a day reassembling it that it was, in fact, a double. Oops. So it was left to him to take it to the dump. He still loves us, I think.

    A clean, bare room, a fresh start (the polyurethane fumes almost swept us away last night, but enough complaining), which, I’m happy to say, my required annual IRA distribution paid for.

    All of a sudden possibility looms. What a wonderful birthday present. One really needs nothing more.

    “And what would you like for your birthday?”

    “Possibility.”

    All of a sudden winter, which has tried its best to take over, doesn’t seem so drear, the sun’s on the snow, and the geraniums, and I, are leaning toward the light.