Letting Go . . .

We are preparing for the grandmother of all garage sales being held this weekend by a group that I’m in. We’re looking around our house to see what we can contribute. What do we have the most of?? Books! So we start there, scanning each shelf to see what might be redundant or no longer of interest. Women’s Studies—I don’t want to count the dollars that I spent over the years I was teaching this subject! Literature—lots of stuff here that I won’t look at again. Business Communications? What are the chances that I’ll teach that again? Pretty slim, I tell myself.

And then there’s the wide swath of books that I read when I was writing my thesis. Oh my, did I actually read all this stuff? I flip open several volumes. Yes, there’s underlining, highlighting, and my own notes neatly written in the margins, from the first chapter to the last.

I start pulling books off the shelves and quickly fill four boxes. I survey the shelves, ready for a second pass. I marvel that although I have removed 67 books, it hardly seems to have made a dent. Admittedly, I did pull some books from on top of the bookcases—not actually a shelf but drawn into service several years ago because there was no room for yet another bookcase! And I rearranged some, sorting as I moved from shelf to shelf. Hmm . . . what’s this Atwood doing over here? Back where it belongs it goes! Three copies of The Handmaid’s Tale??—There’s a reason: one for home, one for the office (so I don’t have to carry a copy back and forth every day), and a previous edition that has many useful handwritten notes. I decide to keep all three—extravagant, I know, but I’m not ready to part with them—or maybe it’s just with something they represent. A George Macdonald separated from its siblings! Ah! a happy family reunion.

The books may be a little looser on the shelves, making them easier to take from their formerly too-snug spot, but really, the shelves look pretty much the same: full. I must keep culling.

The problem is that as soon as these are delivered over to the garage sale organizers, someone will ask me for a book, and I’ll say, Oh, yes, I have a copy of . . . oh, no, actually I just got rid of that!

But such is life. There is a time to let go of stuff. And for me, this is It.

Well . . . some things.