Ode to a Clean Garage

Last week Monday, immediately upon putting the kids to bed, I walked out into the garage and started opening boxes. I was out there in the night air sorting through until 12:15am, when a tornado siren prompted me to go inside and check the TV... and discover that it was 12:15am. Shower and sleep at that point.

By the way, the weather seemed perfect when the siren started, and as far as I could tell never got really bad in my neighborhood.

Most nights this week and most of the day today found me in the garage sorting through. My garage has been a problem looming over me since I moved to Missouri and there is no excuse. Yes, there was a rodent problem that first summer and I do find mousey evidence in random areas of my old belongings. But the worst of that I threw away as soon as it was discovered when I moved into the house in Republic with Darin in September 2004. So much of what we brought from California just never got unpacked. Then after moving to this duplex, many boxes we backed up from the old house never got unpacked either.

Purging my abode of these boxes and piles of forgotten belongings has been kind of a therapy for me. A meditation at any rate. Inside each box has been a peek inside a former life: clothes I used to wear, toys Mia used to play with, photos of what my life used to be at some random period. Above all there are books and books and books. Whatever else I did not accomplish for myself in my twenties, I accumulated a hell of a book collection that sounded interesting and I got around to reading only maybe 20% of them before they were packed away.

This garage cleaning had me reflecting on what I was running towards when I used to hop jobs every year or two, hop relationships and coasts every year or two. I was chasing happiness pretty hard and I was pretty miserable. Everything was a supreme force of will; every relationship and every job I kept one foot out the door. I was uncomfortable everywhere, in every friendship, every relationship, every geography, and so I kept on moving. "It" had to be found sometime in my travels - that thing that would click and make me feel like a natural fit for life. Funny, it never happened until I was effectively stranded out here in Springfield Missouri in a nonfunctioning marriage and new motherhood. But I'm left with all these relics from the bright, shiny, frenetic, ultimately empty chase of my younger years.

The books I accumulated, even the portion I read and loved, look different to my older eyes. Subjects like the education system, philosophy, feminism, history.... man do they pull different strings in my brain now. Age, parenthood, maybe explain that. But also I am coming from inner calm that I never had before.

When I went up to Minnesota last year to see Colleen and Phil graduate I was using Colleen's hair dryer at some point and looking around her apartment. I kept coming back to this little sign she had posted in a frame - I think it was on a tabletop. It said something like "Life is not finding yourself. It is about creating the person you want to be." Revelation. I have ruminated on that idea since that weekend. I knew on that trip my marriage was failing and I knew I needed to change my life. It is sort of liberating to give up this false sense of "searching" and just start making some executive decisions about my life. Waiting for external confirmation - seems crazy now - has been driving many aspects of my destiny for a long time.

So, I am very close to having a garage that is the envy of all my neighbors. What will I have gained? Space for the kids' bikes? Check. Good reading material for all my downtime? Check. A Hanta virus infection? Remains to be seen. (yes, that was for Phil) The biggest thing I feel like I'm doing is clearing the slate so I can create something purposeful and geniune, small scale and humble, and totally what I want it to be.