SMALL BITES … adventures in downsizing
Jan Kinzel
Days of Bears and Sunflowers … What proved to be the first step in our downsizing exercise happened about a year prior to the sale of our primary residence. At the time, I didn’t realize that this was just the beginning.
In 1986 we purchased a vacation home in the Lake Tahoe area. We enjoyed all seasons in the mountains for many years. Just as with our primary home, guests enjoyed it with us. Sometimes a week-end or full week stay served as the “big” auction item for various charity events. Having that place meant a lot to me, our family and our friends. With the downturn in the economy, it became the first sacrifice we needed to make. I could hardly face selling it, so I tearfully signed the necessary papers and then someone else owned my mountain home.
As is usual with vacation homes, it was sold with all of the furnishings. However, there were some personal items and other things that we wanted to keep. Once it was sold I didn’t return. I felt too sad and asked my husband to take the items out that we were keeping. He did so along with the help of our son-in-law. The two of them went up to the mountains and brought the “stuff” to our home. It sat in the garage unlooked at by me for the rest of that year, until I got the word that we now we were going to have to sell our home.
Forced to go through the items and the pain again, I started sorting. Christmas was looming, funds were short and here was all of that “stuff” that I would not be using any longer. For Christmas gifts that year, we gave my ice skates to our granddaughter, my winter scene dish place settings to our daughter-in-law and several jig-saw puzzles to our other granddaughter (She’s a puzzle addict like I am). This prompted us to find Christmas gifts for others in that same family from other garage dwelling items. Our grandson received a cool anatomy book (He’s interested in a medical career.) and our son inherited our two-moving-boxes-full collection of LPs. Our son and his family were thrilled with the gifts as were we to have a place for some of our cherished possessions.
You may think that this is the end of the story, but you’d be wrong. I still, even after a year, had no closure on the mountain home. As we
began planning for our new condo, I decided to use a sunflower motif for the guest bedroom. I remembered that we had a painting by my mother-in-law of sunflowers. How cool that would be to have something of hers in our new place. She has been gone for almost twenty years. She was a great person and a great friend to me.
When she was in her mid fifties, she decided to complete high school and receive her GED. She was foreign born and her first language was German. Along the way of doing this, she took some art classes and discovered that she had a wonderful talent for painting. One of her art teachers had her class copy famous works of some of the masters. We hung her “Monet Sunflowers” painting in our mountain home and it got left behind.
My husband contacted the new owners and asked if we could retrieve the painting. They said we could if they had kept it and they would look for it and let us know. They weren’t sure because they had done some remodeling on the mountain home and had stored some things in an extra room. A couple of weeks later they emailed to say that it was there and we could come to their home down here to pick it up. Last night we did and we have it hanging on our hotel room wall!
It’s still not the end of the story until I tell you how I finally got closure on the mountain home.
I had no prior contact with the buyers but felt ready to accompany my husband to retrieve the painting. Turns out, Tanjya, a German girl, is just the sweetest person and was happy to meet us and invited us to stop by when we are up in Tahoe. She also told us this: They did an extensive kitchen remodel – new counters, appliances – the whole nine yards! Between Thanksgiving and Christmas a bear entered the home and destroyed the kitchen. Two more bears also ransacked the house. Thank God, nobody was in the house at the time.
On the way home from picking up the painting, we marveled at the preservation of Mom’s picture and that the bears didn’t destroy the home when we owned it or were there. I was finally thankful that we sold the mountain home. We’ll rent a condo in Squaw Valley next time we go to the mountains!
Tip: Don’t count God out.
Romans 8:28 All things work together for good to those who love Godand are called according to His purpose.