Friday, February 1, 2013

Project - The Things That Feed My Soul


The "Life" part of Lit and Life? Today that's what I'm thinking about. I've been forced lately to do some thinking about possessions - which things do you really need to live, which things do you need to feed your soul?

My mother-in-law has had some health issues in the past couple of months that have necessitated us beginning to think about moving her to a much smaller place. We've had to consider what she "needs" physically and what she "needs" to make a new place feel like home. She cannot take her dining room set, her piano, her couch. Likewise, nothing in her second bedroom. But she absolutely must take the Eskimo sculpture that her husband brought back from a trip he took to Alaska and which has sat on her hearth for 40 years.

This got me to thinking...if we had to downsize, and I mean really downsize, what things would I absolutely have to take with me, which things say "home" to me, which things feed my soul?


Then I thought of Jennie Nash's The Threadbare Heart in which the lead character's home is destroyed in a wildfire. She finds herself need to make a list of the things that were lost (including such mundane things as a bathmat) but also grateful for the things her husband had time to save, including a piece of antique lace from her grandmother. I began thinking about what I would save if I knew my home was going to be destroyed and I had one hour to save as much as I could.

These are things you can't really decide last minute, there are too many decisions to be made, too many priorities to be set. Hence, Project - The Things That Feed My Soul was born. I haven't worked out all of the details: I haven't set a timeline for completing the project. What I do know is that it starts with going through every room, really looking at what's in it.

Some things are a given: our photos, scrapbooks, family history archives are going on both lists. The secretary that was my grandmother's treasure will move with me where ever I go as well as the rocking chair I used to rock all of my children to sleep when they were babies. Unless, of course, it's not already been passed on to rock my grandbabies to sleep!

I'll be updating my progress here as I go, perhaps as part of my Sunday Salon posts. Have you ever thought about what you would save in a fire? What you would take with you no matter where you go?  I'd love to hear about the things that feed your soul and why.

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