Letting Go For Real. Forever.

There's good news and bad news.

First, the good news. This will be the final time I will speak of this for months, so at least you can now come here and not dread reading about it again.

Some of you will understand. Others will think me crazy or ungrateful. But, oh well...

Okay, now the bad news... See that photo, above? Yesterday morning, Tom dragged home that huge, heavy, ugly, heavy, rusty and did I mention heavy trailer-mounted lawn vacuum. A man gave it to Tom for free and he told me he couldn't pass up that kind of a deal.

I stared at that heavy/ugly piece of machinery and then I looked over at my husband who has seven herniated discs in his back and neck and this is what I said:

"This is the last straw. This broke the camel's back and I refuse to let it break yours. Next Spring we are sticking a For Sale sign on the front lawn. I cannot handle this pressure. I can no longer watch you self-destruct. I see now that you can't help yourself when it comes to tractor stuff so--to save your life--we are going to sell this house."

Yes, that's what I told him. I wasn't even overly-emotional this time, but just matter-of-fact and, well, defeated. And tired. Tired of watching Tom not use wisdom and tired of my own pretending this farm thing is working. It's not.

Almost immediately Tom realized he should never have lugged that clunky thing home and so he contacted his partner in crime, Al, to see if he'd like it. Al will take just about anything. (Yes, rather like, "Give it to Mikey--he'll eat anything.") heh.

And then we drove down country roads to an estate sale inside a barn (I bought three perfect books), ate lunch at an incredibly old-fashioned hamburger stand beside a scenic part of The Erie Canal, grocery-shopped in a tiny place I call Grover's Corners and had a wonderful day.

In September we'll invite our favorite real estate lady, Cher, over to dinner (as we promised two years ago) and we'll ply her with questions, many, some which I already asked in a letter I mailed to her Friday when I was still vacillating about selling.

I am vacillating no more. And already there is peace inside my head, the struggle is gone and dreams of a cottage-y place and clutter-given-away and a tiny, manageable yard are being birthed. There's a new, lighter, freer phase ahead for us and I'm almost giddy about it.

New dreams for a new day. And always there will be gratitude that we made this bold move, did the farm thing and for the rest of our lives we will never have to wonder, "What if we had ...?"

We moved, we made discoveries, we lived memorably... and we learned this was a short, but necessary, season in our lives. And hey...it was never meant to last forever, anyway. We knew that going in. We knew that on moving day.