Cleaning out and Letting Go

“Quick, someone SOMEONE open the door to the garage!”

My daughter’s voice boomed down the staircase. I didn’t appreciate her barking orders at me.

After all, that’s my job. Why couldn’t she open the door herself?

I followed the sound of her voice and soon realize why she couldn’t open the door.

Her arms were full of a year’s worth of notes. Her entire Freshman year of high school. A tree’s worth of it, was piled in her arms and about to topple over.

“I think I killed a whole tree this year,” she said.

Fortunately, it will all be recycled, I told her.

To follow suit, my husband then got rid of his own notes. Five years of notes he took in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. Notes he hung on to for nearly 17 years.  They overflowed the recycle bin. A summer wind picked up sheet after sheet of chemical and mathematical equation and scattered them along our block. We had to go chase the papers down the street to secure them with a rock for the next day’s recycling pick up.

Summer brings on a whole new pace. This summer, all three of my kids will be at summer camp. But this summer there is the potential for an even more cataclysmic shift in store for my family.  I can only write this now because all the important people have been informed.

Now, as the summer starts and the house begins to quiet, all we can do is wait.