230330 Retired?

His mother always said: “save it for a rainy day”. But when did saving for a rainy day become the problem rather than the solution?

When the old man finally retired, he moved to the midwest and bought a small farm so he could spread out.

His wife settled in and gathered things about her that made her feel permanent for once. She had lived her life with the minimum of ‘stuff’ and now gathered and relished having all of the extra dishes and linens and general junk that a normal person had. It was normal to fill a home with things that we didn’t need and would never use wasn’t it?

The two of them brought an old country house that had once been the center of a large farm, but had since been auctioned then pieced out into smaller sized parcels for folks that wanted to have room to stretch out and breathe. The big old house had an equally grand old basement that just cried out to be filled. And fill it they did.

Twenty years down the line, the old farmhouse was bursting at the seams. It had to be a rule or something, when you owned open space even if you didn’t want to fill it, someone else did it for you. Every time he saw his father, dad had something that he gave his son to keep because he would surely have use for it down the line. So one day at a time there was a piece of guttering added. Then a set of oversize wrenches just right for working on the tractor. Next an old storm window that didn't fit anything, but was in good shape. Things just kept adding up.

During those years, his wife was busy going to all those garage sales she never could go to before. Garage sales promoted a strange mentality. Something was cheap and it would come in handy on some rainy day.

When grandma sold out and moved to a small apartment in a nearby town, she brought 50 years of accumulation with her that wouldn't fit in the apartment. The excess went to the basement on the farm. The seams on the old farmhouse stretched toward the limit.

Time was right for a garage sale. He looked over the amassed treasure and contemplated what needed to go and what needed to stay.

The books seemed an easy target. Once he had read them, why keep them? It wasn’t so easy. The books were resources for opinion, reference for repair tasks and some just pleasure for an afternoon of dreams and adventure.

He looked at his tool supply. There were tools that would never get used. Between old tools and grandma’s discarded tools there were extras. What about that ball peen hammer? Even though he had no use for a ball peen, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t in some future project. And as long as he could twirl a wrench he knew the tractor would need him to do so.

That old fence equipment out on the treasure pile would never be used. He was sure of that. He had raised his last lamb, last ornery calf. Raising livestock for seven years had been long enough. But this equipment was expensive to buy and no one would want to give near what it was worth. He stopped by the neighbor’s place and said: “Come by I’ve got some fencing gear for you”.

The old barn was loaded with flowerpots. He and his wife had bought hundreds of flowers, shrubs and trees through the years and planted them on the farm. The pots made their way to the barn and just parked. They should have been easy to dispose of. But he looked at them and wondered if his wife would want to plant some new flowers in them to beautify the front porch.

Well at least those clothes would be easy to sort out for sale or disposal. He looked into his closet and dresser drawers and pulled out things he hadn’t worn for years. He started tossing things into separate piles, one for disposal and one for sale. The more he looked, the more he wondered if he would lose weight and once again fit into those trousers. He would need the old jeans for tractor maintenance or painting. Slowly each article went back into the drawer.

That night over dinner, she asked him how much he had ready to sell. “Well not anything really” he said.