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The next day, Scott takes out an ad in the Duluth News Tribune: “Huge garage sale this Saturday 320 West 25th St. 9-3.” We work for the next two nights after Morgen’s in bed, going through our stuff and picking out everything we don’t need, pricing it, and moving it to the backyard. On Thursday we have stacks of stuff back there, and our house feels so much better.
“What do you think?” Scott asks.
“Let’s keep going,” I say. “Let’s go through the house again!”
This time, instead of looking for stuff to get rid of, we’re picking out things not to get rid of. “There has to be a good reason to keep it,” I tell Scott. If there isn’t one, it goes. Good reasons can be practical or sentimental, so there’s lots of opportunity to hold on to stuff. But it just changes the whole perspective. Instead of keeping everything except for chosen items, we’re getting rid of everything except for chosen items. And then, all we’ll have left are things we have deliberately chosen, for one reason or another, to keep.
Scott’s all for it, and we spend the next day going through boxes and cupboards and shelves, saying, “I’ll keep this and that, and everything else can go.” We get rid of perfectly good dishes, a spare set of pots and pans, and a patchwork quilt that I got for Christmas and never used. It’s nice, but I don’t need it. I’ll let somebody else have it, and maybe it’ll help keep them out of Wal-Mart for a while.
“This is liberating!” I say when we’re done. “Everyone should do this. They should try letting go of what they don’t need.”
“The problem,” Scott says, “is that people think they need their stuff. Most people aren’t able to let go like we are.”
“Good point. Others are working toward what we’re giving up.”
Road Trip
We use the money from our garage sale to take a road trip. We ask my dad and Pat to come stay with Morgen, and we pull out the map. There are so many places we haven’t been, so many places I’d love to discover. But we only have a few days, not to mention very limited funds, so that limits how far we can go. Most places are too far: Salt Spring, New Orleans, The Smokey Mountains, Maine. Where can we go that’s only a day’s drive from Duluth?
Scott thinks of it first: South Dakota, where we drove when we first left Moorhead.
“Remember that place where we camped outside, under the stars?” he asks.
“Where was that?”
“By Pierre, wasn’t it? Before that, maybe?”
“Let’s just head in that direction,” I say, smiling. The thought of taking off somewhere, heading out for a new experience, fills me with an excitement I haven’t felt in a long time. It’s a welcome feeling.
My dad and Pat arrive before dinner, their arms filled with bags and presents for Morgen. She squeals in delight when she sees them, and she takes them by the hand and leads them to her room to show them the drawings hanging on the walls. I follow to the entryway and stand and watch them make their way around the room. “Look!” Morgen says as she points to each one, and my dad and Pat praise each picture as though it’s the best piece of art they have ever seen. I know they’ll be fine while we’re gone, but I still feel a twinge of nervousness. Morgen’s only three, and being left without us for six days is a long time.
“She’ll be fine,” my dad assures me after Morgen’s in bed. “Don’t worry.”
“What happened to all your stuff?” Pat wants to know. “The place looks so much more bare since we were here last.”
“We thinned out,” Scott says with a smile.
We take off early the next morning. I grab a coffee at the gas station and sip it as the Minnesota landscape rolls by. Early afternoon, the forests and lakes are replaced with rolling pasture, which then flattens out into prairie field. Then, we’re entering Moorhead, where we lived so long ago. There’s the motel where Scott worked.
“Do you want to call up any old friends?” I ask.
“Naw. They’re probably all gone by now.”
We drive by our old apartment, next to the railroad tracks, where I spent so many lonely hours. I don’t remember it looking so run-down. “Do you think it looked that bad when we lived here and we just didn’t notice, or do you think it’s gotten worse?”
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