Ann's Words

One of the blessings of serving missions is learning to live with less and learning to live in smaller places.  Each time we come home, we are determined to thin out our STUFF and simplify our lives.

There are places in our home that are full of things that haven’t seen the light of day for years.  This bottom desk drawer is one of those places.  Adam was 2 years old when we moved into this new home in 1994.  Claire was born the day before we moved in.  She came home from the hospital the next day to this place .  Aaron followed 16 months later.

This bottom desk drawer was the first place I kept Adam and Claire’s papers and things that came home from preschool or church.  In just a few years, the drawer was filled with their treasures.  Then I shut that drawer and moved on to other places to fill.  I honestly haven’t opened this drawer in about 30 years.  Today was the day to clean it out and thin things down.

I spent a few hours looking at and reading every piece of paper filed here.  Memories flooded back to me of my children as littles.  I had a wonderful afternoon in their company.

Here’s a sampling of what I found filed away here:

Claire’s hands above, age 3.  Aaron’s hands below, age 2.

It’s hard to believe these kids are grown now and having kids of their own.  Today I turned back time and stepped into a world I miss like crazy.

We’ve just enjoyed a 10 day visit from John’s oldest sister, Chris Owens.  She and her husband, Bill live in Arizona but have a condo here to escape to in the summer.  She came up to oversee some work at their condo.

My favorite things this week with Chris were taking daily 2 mile walks with lots of visiting, watching her grandkids who live in this area come to see her and hearing her cheer them on, making homemade granola, and doing these 3 very fun puzzles.

I also helped Chris put together this little quilt made from 9-patches left in her mother’s scrap bag.  She will hand quilt it and another small quilt left behind by Grandma Peggy.  Chris’s oldest grandson and his wife are expecting twin girls in a few weeks.

At Chris’s encouragement, John and I signed up for “Silver Sneaker” passes to the Orem Rec Center.  These passes are for old people and allow us to use the facility free of charge (the charge goes to our insurance company who wants us to stay healthy).  Chris and Bill love doing indoor walks there when they’re in town.

It takes 16 laps around the track to equal 2 miles.  I think I prefer walking outside, unless the weather is bad.

The last time I visited the pool here was the day before going to have Adam.  I swam 3 miles that day.  I haven’t been back since.  Now there is a very fun water park for kids next to the lap pool.

We are old and we have a lot of stuff.  A week or two ago you could hardly see this desk in our basement–it was buried under piles of books and old computers and things we no longer use.  It took us a week to work to the bottom of the piles and thin things out.  John is on a quest to do that to our entire house.

It’s really hard to part with things we’ve used and loved, especially books.  In the olden days when we traveled, to remember a place, you’d buy a book.  This was long before we had the internet or digital images at our finger tips.  When I was living in South Africa, I poured over the books in local bookstores before deciding which ones to take home to remember a land I loved.  John did the same when he lived in Switzerland.

Here is a stack of beloved books we parted with this week.  I had to take this photo to remember them.

I even parted with my beloved Afrikaans dictionary.  In today’s world, we have every language, every word in our phones with translation apps that even speak to us.  There is no longer a need for dictionaries of any kind.

Here are travel guides, that went with us all around the world.  Now, travel apps are in our phones, just like dictionaries and words.

We donated 4 large boxes of books to a local used bookstore this week.  This is just the beginning.  We are thinning out.  It’s painful, especially parting with books.

I remember when a old friend said, “I no longer have the luxury of reading a book twice.”  It was his way of saying, I just won’t live long enough to read all the books I want to read.  I understand that feeling now.  It’s time to share these beloved books with others.