There’s much more that will have to happen between now and the end of November, when we are supposed to move into THE apartment, which we haven’t yet purchased but we’re working on. Inevitably, the dreaded ‘D’ word, one subset of its parent, the dreaded ‘M’ word, will rear its ugly head. Actually, it has already. That’s ‘D’ as in ‘downsize,’ something that shouldn’t happen to one’s worst enemy – although there are a few of the political persuasion here and there that I would gladly send packing ‘down’ the yellow brick road. And so this segment can rightly be entitled:

The Gentle Art of Downsizing

Here’s a tale of woe worth considering, one that happened to a dear friend of ours. She had, stored in boxes, what she considered to be her life – at least, her professional life, everything she felt she had accomplished in her career with no small amount of effort. I never got to see what she had in those boxes. It was too much to keep around the house, so the whole kit and kaboodle was all kept safe and sound in a storeroom near where they lived for the longest time. And then…. somebody else needed that space for whatever they needed it for. And so, her life’s accomplishments became homeless and eventually found its way to a nearby dumpster where all of it came to a sorry end. I don’t know about you, but I feel our friend’s pain. There has to be a more dignified way to part with one’s past.

Unbeknownst to me, Natania, our favorite local daughter, had left her own papers –mostly from university – in our apartment. Knowing that our BIG move is in the offing, she has gone through all that material, tossing some and taking the rest with her where it will be safe and sound. I guess it pays to be proactive.

What about me?, you inquire. Anyone who’s been to our apartment knows that we – especially I – am not short on stuff and that some of it will have to be discarded one way or another as we prepare for the dreaded ‘D’ word.

Just as it is easier to gain weight than to lose excess poundage around one’s midsection, there is usually less difficulty in collecting items to fill every nook and cranny of the space available than to jettison some of it when The Time Comes. Can we consider this process of materially slimming down to be an art or a science? Certainly at least a discipline, something to be thought about and considered. When we think of discarding one’s possessions, there are distinctions that can be made. Most of us own things that are there just because they are there: things that people gave us; things we don’t know what to do with; things we may need sometime in the future, but we don’t know when or for what; things we once used but no longer; things we have no incentive to ditch because they’re not in anybody’s way. You get the idea. Those items shouldn’t be too hard to dispose of, but some people have more trouble than others in doing just that.

There are, of course, people who have no difficulty throwing things out, who are heartless in this endeavor. I remember the day when my mother, of blessed memory, in the process of moving from her apartment to a senior residence, told me she was about to toss boxes of old black and white photographs – studio portraits – taken of her family. NOOOOOO!!!!!!! Don’t do that; at least let me go through them. We reached a compromise. She would look at every photograph. If she could identify the subject, she would hold onto it. If she had no idea which long-lost relative it was, it would be deep-sixed. That’s how I wound up with a treasure trove of pictures of my mother’s family, including a portrait of great-grandmother Zelda (born in 1828, died in 1929) taken in Riga, probably shortly before she came to The States in 1906).

Most of aren’t that cold-blooded. If we have items that have special meaning, it’s hard for us to let them go. I know full well that Betty, the doll that Barbara was given as an infant by Uncle Morris (whose grandson, wife, and daughter are alive and well in Jerusalem), and has been by her bedside all these years, will be guaranteed a place somewhere in our new apartment – even if there’s not enough room for the matching nightstands in our new bedroom.

But what about your stuff? Let’s acknowledge that most of what is being stored in our apartment is mine: books, records, photographs, you name it. How was I going to reduce it all to something manageable – that would fit in the space allotted to me when we move? I do not want my belongings to meet the dismal fate of our friend’s life’s work – at least while I’m still around to protect it.

There are different ways to approach the dreaded ‘D’ word. There is a very prosaic method that works for some people. You have twelve shelves of books. Each day, take one shelf and go through it. Take out every book and decide: yes, no, yes, no, no, yes. In a matter of minutes you have reduced the pile of books, let’s say, in half. What could be easier than that?

Except that some of us are not ‘some people,’ if you get my drift. For those some of us, deciding whether or not to keep a book is not as simple as asking, ‘Can you identify the person in this photograph?’ There is, instead, a hard and emotionally draining winnowing out process. Some books, especially those that have travelled with me from my unmarried days on the Upper West Side, are at the end of their useful life, pages yellowing and crumbling, bindings falling apart; these would not survive another move, no matter what. There are others that have become less useful nowadays, reference books that have been made obsolete by the internet, for example. But apart from these volumes that are a definite ‘no,’ it becomes increasingly difficult to part with a book that is still worthwhile. Possibly no; maybe no; I’d like to keep it, but…; isn’t there anybody who would want it?; if only there were thirty hours a day to read some of these…. Now you understand why I have so many books. This is not going to be easy, but here goes…. Feel free to share my pain – assuming you have a place for it.