The only question which remains:  Will these boxes, a chair, and a lamp fit in the Prius?

After seven hours of sorting, considering, wrapping, and packing, I’m ready to take a fragment of my heritage and distribute it among the next generation of Corley Kids.  A few items will make their way to one brother and a sister.  But most of the soup cups, saucers, and whatknots which I brought from my parents home over the years have been allocated among my son, nieces, and nephews.  I’m packing the bulk of them and starting on The Great Road Trip of 2017 in twenty-four hours.

I’m tired, but not complaining.  Down-sizing has given me what I needed: closure.  Two months ago, I started the process with a solid forty-eight hours of nearly uninterrupted perusal of grade school papers, wedding pictures, and old scribblings.  A flood of tears followed twelve contractor bags to the curb, tagged and ready for the landfill.   I tucked a handful of soft memories and sweet souvenirs into small containers destined for a back spot in the under-bed storage of my tiny house.  A few photos went into albums for my son and my sister Joyce.  I let most of it go with little resistance.

The decluttering went faster after the pictures and old love letters.  I practically threw amfuls into cardboard boxes.  Miranda spent one afternoon helping.  She couldn’t assemble the boxes fast enough.  My dear friend Katrina asked how I could decide what to take and what to give away.  I had no answer for her except to gesture.  I’m moving from 1300 square feet to 313 counting the guest sleeping loft.  Ruthlessness guided my decisions.

But my mother’s soup cups!  Those couldn’t go to strangers.  The stove lot that I won in an up-round or down-round!  I couldn’t stop smiling, handling the little salt-shakers, thinking of my siblings and I walking through the house.  Youngest to oldest; oldest to youngest — we picked what we wanted in turns by birth order.  The middle children never got an advantage, but no one complained.

I have seven nieces, counting the two whom my family lost and later, many years later, reclaimed.   Three were born before my mother died; the other four know her only by legend. My son has heard his fill of stories.   I don’t know how he feels about the grandmother who died six years before he came into this world; but he knows her sayings.  He doesn’t take any wooden nickels, that’s for sure.

My mother often went ‘junking’, embarking on long drives in rural Illinois to find the little shops filled with other people’s dishes.  I grabbed as many of those gems as I could, twenty-six years ago after my father’s death.  Last evening,  I touched each bowl, every platter, every tea cup, thinking of my mother and the granddaughters whom she did not live long enough to see grow into amazing young adults.  I held delicate Haviland under warm water, wiping away the grime of two decades on my open shelves.  Nothing matches; but everything makes sense.  It’s all my mother:  Pure Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley.

This round favors the girls; I’m not sure what I’ll do for the nephews.  That’s a question for another day.

In a few minutes, I will throw on clothes, wash the breakfast dishes, and pull the car out to begin assessing whether  I have to make a frantic call to Enterprise and drop three hundred bucks on a rental.  Either way, I’m taking these boxes to the girls.  Each includes a note written to the niece whose name appears on the lid, telling her about the contents.  I’ve tried to give them a little flavor of the grandmother they never got to know.  It’s not enough, but it’s what I have.  I have no riches; I can’t introduce them to anyone famous.  But I can give them a glimpse of a woman who loved them, who would have loved the ones she did not get to see.  I can help them understand her tenderness and her determination.  She never had a set of matching Limoges, but she acquired enough to give a few to every one of the young women who, by birth or by choice, continue her legend of strength and beauty into the twenty-first century.

It’s the eleventh day of the forty-sixth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.