The best you can come up with is a stepladder? Really?

Notice to readers: My wife and I have just moved across town. After 50 years of marriage and almost two dozen moves all over the country, you would think this move would be a snap. It wasn't. Eighteen years in one house made us soft. And a little bit whiny. So bear with me for a while.

I'll probably be writing a lot about the move and its aftermath. For sure, I will be updating you soon on Missy Kitty and how she handled her relocation. All I need to tell you for now is that Missy Kitty is a cat. What more do I need to say? A friend told us, in the throes of the move, that moving was like childbirth. We forget the pain and struggle. That's why we have more children. That's why we move so much. Using that analogy, my wife and I have had twins. Twice. In the same year. I don't think we will forget.

n

There have been thousands of occasions in the past few days for my wife and I to become overwhelmed by nostalgia.

As part of our move, we decided to do the Big Downsizing. This meant putting every single thing we possess in one of four piles: move, sell (at an estate sale that continues today and Saturday), donate or toss.

In the process, we uncovered things in our lives that had not been exposed to daylight for decades. There were some things we thought we had already disposed of, but there they were.

So you can see how, on occasion, my wife or I, or both of us, might get choked up a bit. If you decide to sell, donate or toss something, it's a decision that cannot be reversed. It was tough making all those choices.

My biggest pang of emotion was, I think, a bit unusual.

Our move was a three-day affair. It started with packing and loading everything going to the estate sale. The second day was for packing everything to be moved to our new home. The third day was the actual move and unloading everything we had decided to keep, which was a lot.

On the first day, as the moving van was being loaded, I had to run an errand. When I returned, I parked on the street because there was so much activity around our house. As I walked up the driveway, a fellow from the moving company was carrying my old stepladder to the van.

That's when it hit. The life and times of that stepladder swept through my mind like a tsunami of events, most of them ordinary, many of them special in so many ways.

As I recall, the stepladder was purchased in the early 1970s when we moved to Nevada, Missouri. I decided I could install a light fixture in the kitchen. That old house had 10-foot ceilings, so I needed quite a boost.

That was the year I discovered I am not an electrician. Suffice to say I paid a price for my ignorance. But, thanks to my new stepladder, I was finally able to get the light fixture in place. My main accomplishment? I didn't fall off the ladder.

That ladder was purchased when ladder manufacturers just assumed people who bought and used ladders had a brain and a good dollop of common sense. There were no neon-orange warnings on that ladder telling me not to stand on the top of it. Standing on top of the ladder was a choice I was free, as a red-blooded American, to make at my own peril. If I fell off the ladder, no one would expect me to collect millions of dollars from the ladder maker because of my own stupidity.

So there I am, walking up the driveway, and I see the ladder headed for the estate sale. And it hits like a punch to the gut.

That ladder had been part of so much of the life of our family, which includes two sons.

There was that first Christmas in the Nevada house, which was a Sears kit home with two stories and a huge entry hall that rose up to the first landing of the stairs. Well, this meant we could get a tall -- a really tall -- evergreen to decorate.

So we did. Unfortunately, we failed to account for the girth of tall spruces, which meant we could barely get the tree through the front door. And then there was the matter of keeping it upright in the entry hall.

Ah, the answer was the stepladder. I tied the top of tree with string and fastened it to a nail driven into the high ceiling. So we decorated our strung-up tree and went to bed. The crashing sound that brought all of us to the landing on the stairs was, of course, the fully decorated tree, which had managed to slip its moorage.

But that's what stepladders are for: to take care of messes like this.

The ladder also rescued many a ball or Frisbee from the roof.

And how many times did we climb up to get Miss Kitty, Missy Kitty's predecessor, off the roof? It seems she could get up there with ease but was at a loss about getting down.

In one way or another, that old ladder had been a big part of our lives for so many years: cleaning gutters, trimming limbs, hanging pictures, changing light bulbs -- all the ordinary things people use ladders for.

Plus so many special memories, too, like putting the last special ornament at the very tiptop of every Christmas tree.

I hope whoever buys that old ladder appreciates its place in our family's history. And I hope whoever buys that old ladder has a brain and enough sense to be careful. Of course, the new owner is likely to take unnecessary risks, too.

But I knew what I was doing.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.