RIVER CITY JOURNAL: GOODBYE, BOXES FROM THE ATTIC; HELLO, EMPTY SPACES

There comes a point in your life when you decide not to move all those boxes one more time. It's a big step to take.

Our family's history flashed before our eyes this past weekend. Not because of any near-death experience, mind you.

What happened was this: We looked inside all those boxes we've accumulated over the past 30-plus years.

How many boxes? Enough to fill up one attic and one brother's barn in mid-Missouri.

OK. They weren't all boxes. There were all the usual things you expect to find in storage areas around your house. I can't for the life of me explain, however, why we had four metal Christmas-tree stands.

But there they were, along with old toys, baby clothes, papers and items too numerous to mention that fell roughly into the category of stuff-you-might-sell-someday-at-a-garage-sale-or-give-to-the-Salvation-Army.

Do you have stuff like that?

The reason for all this hubbub was this: After three and a half years of looking, we have bought a house. Yes, I know that is a rather long time to shop for a house. Just ask the patient real estate agent who, no doubt, had begun to wonder about our good intentions.

Several things have come together as a result of this impending move from the loveliest apartment in Cape Girardeau to the home of our dreams with huge oak, ash and elm trees, not to mention the incidental dogwoods and redbuds.

One is both our sons came last weekend for the annual apple butter experience. Once a year we make apple butter like it was going out of style. Not good apple butter. Great apple butter. Most of it winds up wherever the boys are, which this year happens to be Boston and San Antonio.

Another thing is my sensible wife, who saves things and actually uses them years later, long after I've forgotten their very existence. She has decided the time is right to reduce the moving baggage.

And another thing is that our sons volunteered to move exotic plants to Lawrence, Kan., where a friend of our older son had agreed to give them a good home, and then volunteered to rent a truck and pick up all the stuff stored in the mid-Missouri barn on my wife's brother's farm.

Prior to all this, though, my wife and I attacked the attic. We divided this stuff into four piles: one for the Salvation Army, one for us to keep, one for the boys to go through and one for the trash. The Salvation Army was by far the biggest pile. Volunteers came with a truck and hauled it away, making us happy and, presumably, improving the inventory of the thrift store immensely.

On Sunday we were faced with the stuff from the barn. Much of it was tools that are in no way useful to apartment dwellers but which are essential to homeowners. That stuff we keep, naturally.

But the biggest pile included the boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff we had moved so often even my wife wasn't exactly sure what was in them any more.

So we stood there, in the middle of the garage at our new home, opening one box after another, picking and choosing which things to keep (not many) and which to put back on the rental truck (a lot) to be hauled to the city's landfill transfer station.

Each box brought a new set of memories. We had a few laughs. We groaned a lot.

It was the box with the boys' baby clothes and shoes that brought the tears however. What mother could rummage through her children's first clothes without an emotional pang? Fathers, of course, don't cry. They suddenly have to go to the bathroom, pausing only long enough to kick the step on the way into the house so that if sons or wives see the tears welling up, they'll have a darn good excuse.

Amazingly, the stuff-we'll-keep pile was small. Of course, we kept the cradle I made the year my wife was pregnant with our older son, the cradle both boys slept in for the first nights of their lives. And the high chair, which we think would work well for grandchildren. And quite a few of their favorite toys made it to the keeper pile. And all the Legos.

But the rest went onto the truck. Then the boys ripped up all the carpeting and padding in the house. And all the drapes and sheers came down. And a bunch of other stuff.

First thing Monday morning -- the first day of Cape Girardeau's annual cleanup week, thank goodness -- the boys drove the truck to the transfer station and started to unload. They were able to give quite a few things away, which made all of us happy.

Younger son, who was the truck's official driver, said the stuff we threw away tipped the scales at two tons.

Imagine getting rid of that much of your life.

But not the memories.

Like this one: Remember when your kids were little and scuffled in the back seat?

Honest to goodness, the only time the four of us were in the same car together this past weekend was when we went out to eat Sunday evening. On the way home from the restaurant, younger son's voice was heard in the back seat: "Mom, he's on my side."

I'm pretty sure he did that just for old time's sake.

Pretty sure.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.