Lighter

It's really hard for me (and most people?) to get rid of things — why, I don't know: to admit that you'll never learn to play those Irish flutes, move to a sheep farm in New Zeland and wear those sweaters — or even the black satin coctail dress for parties around here? There's also the what-if-I-need it syndrome; the best counter to that is a firm:  “Then I'll buy a new one,” and this time, because I was determined to clear some space and wasn't worried about money, I could say that without fear. 

I also used some old strategies:

- start with the no-brainers (old shopping bags and magazines and such: should I not admit that I'd been keeping them?)

- call a local homeless shelter, ask them what they needed, and then walk around the apartment picking things out like presents. This was actually fun: I chose several boxes of shiny new-looking children's books, and when the woman worker saw A WRINKLE IN TIME her face lit up and she said, "That was my favorite book in fifth grade!"

- sell what I could on ebay and Poshmark. That was more tedious, but still easier than donating things that cost money, quite a lot of money, that you never even wore! I did that, too, reminding myself that the money was gone, whatever happened to the clothes — and it was MORE of a waste to keep them around weighing me down. Things you don't use and don't like just make it hard to find the things you do like. They take up space in your house and your brain.

Whatever you tell yourself, though, it's still hard to decide, and sad, often, to touch things you haven't handled in years. I was determined to do it, though. I made a big pile of rubbish in the basement (not just mine, things other people had left here) and paid someone to drive it all to the dump in his truck.  I emptied my closets until I could see the floor and everything that remained in all three — no more moving one thing to get at another. Now they and my storage unit are mostly empty space: they LOOK lighter, they are lighter, and I feel lighter.

With the money from selling the clothes  I had enough (thanks to 2 Marimekko dresses with DR labels — I never wore either!) to buy something I really wanted: a ring with an aquamarine the color of the sea around Coll on a sunny day. It's a hard color to capture — 

I found the perfect shape at a London gallery — you could even imagine that it was a wave, and the gold around it the sun shining on the water, but the stone was the wrong color — too blue. I wrote to the gallery and eventually, they sent me a photo of the stone the jeweler had picked, but it was more like moss than the ocean:

This time, I called them — the girl who helped me had a Scottish accent and  when I described the color as “like the sea in the Hebrides on a sunny day,” she knew just what I meant.

“Leave it with me,” she said, a very Scottish thing to say.

“I love that expression!” I said — it always reminds me of really competent people on Coll who know how to do things and do them, well. You really can leave it to them. 

I said so, and then she said she was from Oban. That's where you get the boat to Coll. And her father had worked on Coll. I knew then that it would be fine, but she said to send a photo of the color I wanted the stone to be, so she could show it to the jeweler. 

                          

I did, and a few weeks later, she wrote that my ring had come and it was “absolutely gorgeous.” It is. When I first put it on, I understood why in so many fairy tales, rings are magic. This feels as though it almost could be (though rings are as hard to photograph as flowers; the actual color is more like the green ring above).

It's like wearing the ocean around Coll on my finger — in a fairy tale, I could probably turn it three times and go there; but the way I got it is magic enough for me.

                                          

Painting copyright ⒸWendy Soliday. See Wendysoliday.com