Storm Trooper Extraordinaire

It's been just over a year since Kanha and I arrived at our old red house on the corner with the white picket fence and, this weekend, we finally actually truly moved in. With the upstairs renovation finally finished, providing three new rooms of space in the Margie-cave, miraculously including empty closets and shelves just longing for a reason to be, it was time to carefully dismantle the precarious pyramids of clothes and computer cables and old magazines sprawled throughout the house, not to mention hauling one bed out the front door, another across the hall, and the fold-down couch up the stairs. Clearly I couldn't do this all by myself so I asked my sister Nancy to come up from Boston for a couple of days -- not for a Maine get-away of walks on Cape Elizabeth rocky beaches or meals out in the Old Port but to do some work.

Are you as lucky as me, or as blessed?  Do you know someone, anyone, who you can ask to help you with something that really isn't fun -- in this particular case, lifting heavy pieces of furniture up and down stairs and back and forth across the room to find their just right spot, browsing endless pieces of 5th grade artwork and very short stories to decide what to save, sorting rubber bands and hair bands, vacuuming and dusting and just plain cleaning up  -- and she will say yes, without hesitation, not out of obligation but simply out of love?  Moreover, said person is not just willing but is eminently qualified for the job:  muscles rarely seen on a gal of her age (the specific number I am declining to mention...), a slight lack of sentimentality necessary to quickly reduce the overwhelming piles of junk, a linear focus on getting the task at hand crossed off the list, a shared sense of humor, and an endless stream of interesting pop culture commentary from high brow -- reviews of the latest best-seller she's read -- to low -- who is going to win The Amazing Race this year??  I'm not foolish enough to care if it's chance or grace that brought her into my life, I know to just be grateful.

Bedroom Become Family Room -- Hurray!

So starting at noon on Friday, together we storm-trooped the house, room by room, with Kanha and her friend LZ avoiding the rooms we were in and Theo finding them the most comfortable place to be.  Within less than 36 hours we had recreated the home I had imagined from the first day I saw this place, minus a few pictures on the walls and a coffee table or two.  When we were finished and I was racing Nancy to catch the 5 o'clock bus back to the big city, I felt a sense of relief and renewal unexpected -- seemingly unwarranted -- for the size of our two-day accomplishment.  All we had done, really, was reorganize a few hundred square feet of floor space and put a bunch of boxes away.  But with the help of my wonderful loving sister, we had essentially restructured my life and, in so doing, laid out a direction for me to move toward.