Got The Movin' Blues

Sep 28, 2004

Haven't been able to post. Moving is my every day, every minute activity. I'm tired, depressed and stressed. We started taking boxes over to our new apartment. Our intention was to get boxes out of our way as they began to pile up. So we shlepped some over to the apartment. Then, in a few days, we made another trip. Then another. So far, we've moved 75 boxes to the new place and the end is not in sight.

Yesterday we got our closing date: October 18th. So the end (of the moving) is in sight. We've made a big dent, but there's so much more to go. Day in, day out: get up and attack another room, another area of the house. But the big question in my mind -- where are we going to put all this stuff? We're moving from 8 rooms to 6 rooms. And the kicker? No basement. So things have got to go: either in the garbage, to Goodwill or to storage.

It's very hard to throw stuff out. Try throwing away pictures, for example. Having been in the business, I have amassed tens of thousands of photos. Maybe there are millions of photos, I don't really know. But there's a lot. Boxes and boxes of photos. Many are in albums. But thousands are not. These are the recorded history of our family. Parties, Thanksgivings, Passovers, travel, camping, babies growing into toddlers, then into children, then teenagers, then adults. Problem is, too many photos. Put them in storage? Then what? Who's going to look at them? When?


Pumpkin is still perched on unopened moving boxes but her perch is getting narrower as we go continue to pack.


Our van, filled with boxes. Heavy work.

And here's where they've been ending up.

We moved into our house in 1978. I was 32 years old. I'm 58 now. This house contains a big chunk of my life. Of my family's life. Just like our photos, it's a depository of so many events, of so much time, energy and work expended on it. So many happy times, some sad times. If this house could talk it could tell the story of my family, week by week, year by year.

There are many wonderful memories in this old house. There was the time that Larry (Stacey's dad, now gone) and I installed new Anderson windows. What a job. We removed the ancient double-hung windows, enlarged the opening and installed the new units. Brave, I was! And Larry tought me to be brave but also how to use tools, how to measure, how to build.

Stacey and I built our rear deck. We chopped out old windows and converted them into a sliding door. Then we installed upright footings into concrete. On top of that we constructed the deck and transformed our meager back yard into a living space that has given us so much pleasure over the years. Our new apartment, which is two floors in a Brooklyn brownstone, has a postage-stamp sized back yard. But at least it has some outdoor space which I felt was a prerequisite for any new place that we would live in. To move from a house with a driveway and yard to a small, cramped apartment without any outdoor space (even a terrace) was impossible to me.

The deck and the door that we built with sweat and tears.

Our deck - countless summer hours spent out here.

When our picket fence, which had been built by the former owner, deteriorated and began to decay, we decided to recreate it. It's probably the only white picket fence in Manhattan Beach, being more at home in Yankee New England than Brooklyn, and we loved it. The original was a traditional picket fence with pointed tops. We copied our new one from fences we'd seen in Martha's Vineyard on many visits there. Unfortunately, it, too, is now decaying, a victim of the salt air and time.

Me and the upright footings that will support our new picket fence, August, 1999.

Work in progress.

Checking the level. Puttin' on the pickets.

Stacey -- she's on the level.


Our house and picket fence today.

The not-so-famous one-column house on Amherst Street in Manhattan Beach.
Is this what's going to replace our old house?

We're leaving our old house behind. Most likely, it'll be torn down and replaced by some enormous castle-like structure devoid of personality, out of context (except, by this time, these new houses have become prevalent and thus, they are now the context), too large for the 40x100 city lots that they occupy. I guess they too will eventually contain their memories, replacing the houses that once stood in their place. So we're leaving the house, but we'll take our memories with us. Yep, I'm loading those boxes of pictures.