Three piles:
One pile of stuff we think our kids would love to have.
One pile of things we think we can sell.
And the little pile of things we’ll take with us to our new small townhouse in Eugene.
Ed and I are downsizing. It’s too much work to maintain our McKenzie River property. Old-growth tree limbs fall on our roof. Moss and mold grow everywhere, even in our shower. No amount of sealing keeps mice out of our house.
It’s just too much.
I look across our bedroom, which has not yet disintegrated into the three piles. On the small bedside table, I see a white lamp with a flexible neck, bent over so its face permanently stares down at the table. Two watches lie side-by-side. A digital alarm clock, the kind with a magnified large-number face. And a framed photo of the two of us emerging from an ancient cave in Costa Rica in…I can no longer remember when…We look so young.
All atop a cherry bedside table that was made in the heart of Amish country.
That means quality, you know, the kind you just can’t find any longer.
I love Amish furniture. The Amish make furniture that provides long-lasting value. Not the cheap imported stuff that floods the Internet these days. Not the mass-produced reproductions.
Amish quality ensures we can pass the things we love down to many generations.
“No, Mom.” My daughter’s blue eyes seem to plead. I know she would rather not hurt my feelings. “I know you love it, but I don’t want any of that stuff.”
Naturally we want to ”pass on the things we love” to those we love who come after us. However, furniture and other physical possessions may not meet their needs.
Similarly, our advice may not fit their needs. My father, a successful electrical contractor, often tied to give me business advice. His values that he demonstrated through his behaviors have stood the test of time. However, his advice about what to do to grow my business that had served him well in his time and small city circumstances typically was not helpful to what I was trying to achieve at a national level.
I wonder about the advice I sometimes try to pass on when I see those I love in need. Why am I anymore likely than my father was to know what actually fits the world they live?
Marlena, your post brought back memories of the days when my mother was trying to parcel out stuff to my siblings & me. Her downsizing rationale was not moving to a smaller place but instead her memories of what she’d lost decades ago in her own family’s inter-generational transfers. She wanted to make sure we all got what we wanted. But, as you have experienced, we didn’t “need” or “want” most of that stuff. However, she did succeed on one front: anything that could fit in a large envelope or small box was mailed to us! At that point, it was our problem!
Ha! Smart woman.
As someone reading this blog on Medium.com (where it was first published) said, it’s really not so much our stuff we want to offload onto the next generation. We just don’t want them to forget all about us.