There’s nothing like moving to help you think about who you are, who you really are.

For years as a young mother, living in a rural area, I was responsible for growing a lot of our food and preserving it for use during our snowy, winter climate. I learned a lot about gardening, had my own rototiller, and a root cellar. I was baking bread with flour which I ground with my wheat grinder. I was making sauerkraut in stoneware crocks and canning tomatoes, green beans, beets, applesauce – lots of fruits and vegetables. I had a raspberry patch and made jam. I enjoyed that lifestyle so much. I loved being that person, even though it entailed a good bit of work. It was about 8 years of my life, thirty years ago.

Since then I have occasionally tried to garden but it felt more like raising produce for insects (or whoever it was who ate it before I got there to harvest). One year I canned tomatoes because the farms here in Florida were practically giving them away – they didn’t have workers to pick them. My Wisconsin persona brought jars, equipment, a pressure canner and expectations to my new home and they have been largely unused since then. I have kept them on a shelf in the garage. I have avoided making decisions that needed to be made.

Who am I now? Even more important, who am I likely to be in the future? It’s not that I don’t still like the thought of gardening, or of having good food put up for the winter. It’s that moving has made me decide not to be a person defined by “my stuff”. It felt empowering to put the jars in the recycling bin, knowing that they could be replaced pretty easily up north, if needed. The person I am is one who adapts to the reasonable default, whatever that is going to be.

Another similar moment (I know, two in one day!!) came in the course of taking the husband to work. He has been dreading closing up his office, making decisions about his boxes of books and papers. He has spoken of it several times so I offered to help him. We took a small table and I arranged all his books where his coworkers could look them over and help themselves. I went through his periodicals and we decided to pitch all but the last year’s magazines.

It’s probably harder for someone who has had a long career doing what they were educated to do. They really become defined by their job. I think the husband’s books, his physics notes from college (yellowed, with bugs, and copious dust), his work memos from eons ago, and bits and pieces of ventilation equipment were defining him to a great extent. He left the room and I took care of some of it for him (dumpster) but I’m not saying exactly what because he reads this too.  If he can actually remember something he needs from it all I will go dumpster diving and look for it. I’m betting there will not be a need.

Now we are freer than we were, but not as free as we will finally be in a couple weeks. We will be free to adapt and be who we really are in our new circumstances. For me, the job will be easier without the canning jars along for the ride, just sayin’…