The Palisadian-Post presents an homage to Will Rogers’ column, “Will Rogers Says,” with a column by Palisadian Jimmy Dunne—on life in the “greatest town in America.”
My wife Catherine and I recently moved.
I realized I had something I never knew I had.
Thirty-four years ago, I carried my wife in my arms over the threshold in our home. Thirty-four years ago. From newlywed days, to witnessing our babies go from little girls to young adults. So many great memories in every inch of every room of our home.
I didn’t think I was ready to “downsize.” What an awful word. I liked walking through our girls’ bedrooms and still seeing their stuff on the walls and on the shelves. I liked our backyard. I liked imagining our kids coming down the steps every Christmas morning.
We put it on the market, it sold in a couple days and suddenly agreements thicker than my leg were instructing me to clear everything I ever had and knew—out.
Every night I found myself saying goodbye to our backyard, to our garden of roses that Catherine would till and trim, to the sidewalk where the girls drove their Barbie cars and learned to ride their bikes, to our front lawn where we hosted tons of talent shows with all the kids on the block—and the red swing on the front porch.
For me, and Catherine, and our girls, from that swing, life was safe. The swing was a comfortable blanket that tucked us in our home—where we all looked out to everything possibly and wonderfully ahead of us.
We found a condo in town and started lining up our ducks of what we were keeping, and what we were tossing. We vowed, if we’re going to do this, we weren’t putting anything in storage.
I literally threw out half my stuff. Half. Half of the furniture. Half of my clothes, books. And the big one … way more than half the boxes in the attic.
The attic was more than an attic. It held our stories. Everything in every box, every framed picture was a story.
After we gave away almost all of the living room furniture, we split the room in half and brought down everything of the girls from the attic and from their rooms.
We invited the girls over, handed them a cocktail and said, “There’s good news and bad news. We’ve saved all this stuff; your outfits, drawings, dolls, skates—for you. It’s now yours. The bad news, whatever’s not gone by Friday at 10 in the morning, it’s getting chucked in that giant green dumpster in front of the house.”
The girls thought we were Mr. and Mrs. Satan. But they went through it, and that Friday, most of it went out the front door and right in the dumpster.
I filled the entire dining room with boxes of all my old stuff. Grade school and high school report cards, birthday cards, trophies, you name it. Boxes of old plaques and diplomas and just stuff and stuff and stuff like that. How could I throw any of this out?
But this guy on my shoulder kept asking—what are my kids going to do with all this a week after I’m six feet under? They’re gonna chuck it all out! As a compromise to that guy on my shoulder, I took a picture of lots of it, but I felt like I was throwing me—right in that huge green garbage bin.
Here’s the crazy thing. The more I threw stuff in there, the easier it got. And I started to kind of like throwing it up and over in that thing. I started to feel lighter. Better.
And we moved in our new smaller spot—and the oddest thing happened.
It became our home.
A picture here and there on the wall, Catherine’s favorite pieces of furniture, all her knickknacks in the bathroom. We blinked, and it looked and felt just like us.
And then I found that thing I never knew I had.
Enough.
I had enough.
The wild thing was that having less—actually opened the door to so much more. More in my personal life. More in my career. More in everything.
I didn’t need those old boxes of our daughter’s stuff. Or all the big, framed pictures of all of us in matching outfits walking on the beach.
All I have to do is look in the eyes of my two girls—and they take me back, every time, to the most beautiful, colorful, emotional scrapbook I could ever dream of having.
All I have to do is hold my wife’s hand, and it hypnotizes me back to days of kissing her for the first time, falling in love with everything she did, seeing her in that hospital room holding our first baby for the first time.
That’s my view from my new swing.
Enough. It sure seems there is so much more to see, and feel, and be—if I have the courage, if I have the will to shape a life that’s just …
Enough.
Jimmy Dunne is modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter (28 million hit records), screenwriter/producer of hit television series, award-winning author, an entrepreneur—and a Palisadian “Citizen of the Year.” You can reach him at j@jimmydunne.com.
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