April 4. This is hard. Harder than I expected. Deconstructing my Santa Cruz house to reconstruct it for today’s market is, essentially, deconstructing the life I lived in it for a decade. Workmen are removing the wall decorations, TV screens, bookcases, and even the blinds that protected my plants from the sun, all taken down and thrown into a pile in the garage. My carefully selected wall colors are being covered in white paint. All white, every room, baseboard, window sill, and trim. New light fixtures, faucets, ceilings (no more cottage cheese finish). The study, where I wrote my last two books, is now just an empty room. The lumpy lawn was taken out yesterday, replaced with fresh sod. Petunias fill the garden I planted with child-friendly and dog-friendly plants, fuzzy, fragrant, and safe to eat. My goldfish swim in frantic circles as gas-fueled clippers and blowers rearrange the formerly calm waters of the pond.

April 7. My realtor suggested I go home after the contracts were signed, but I didn’t listen to her. I wanted to squeeze in all the time I could walking along West Cliff Drive, eating in local restaurants, and reconnecting with places and people who made my life rich and full for so many years. It turns out that West Cliff Drive has washed away in several places, restaurant prices have soared, and at least some of my friends are off on Easter or wildflower adventures. So here I am, watching the workmen take down my quadrophonic speakers, replace light fittings, remove decorative art from the bathroom walls.

April 9. Easter Sunday. My carefully-chosen carpets have been removed from the bedrooms, replaced with vinyl flooring. I fed the fish today and watered the new sod and bedding plants. fairygardenIn my head I saw the Fairy Garden that my oldest granddaughter and I created near the fountain. Remembered Easter egg hunts, the laughter and delight of my granddaughters and their parents as they found each egg. Some were real eggs, hard boiled and colored. Others were plastic, with toys or candy inside. Later we shared Easter Egg Bread and read Humbug Rabbit.  This year three of my four adult children are with their families in Yosemite.  Three six year olds and a teenager, more interested in skiing, hiking and Easter Baskets than egg hunts in the garden with Grandma. But Bean is still attached to the goldfish, each of whom has a name. She’s volunteered to feed the fish until the house changes hands.Humbug Rabbit

April 10. Met with realtor one last time to discuss details of repairs, painting, landscaping, staging. “It will be lovely,” she said. I nodded, a lump in my throat. It really will – I’ve seen pictures of this team’s work. It will be gorgeous. But it will no longer be mine.

April 19. I’m back in Calabasas. My Santa Cruz house goes on the market today.

 

Change is hard.

But with change comes opportunity.

I don’t know this author, but I love his quote:

Every encounter is an opportunity. If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got. Life is all about change.  

Edwin Mamerto

Opportunity, here I come.

Marlene

Marlene Anne Bumgarner writes primarily about food, family, and traditions. Her 2020 memoir, Back to the Land in Silicon Valley, is about raising children, animals, and vegetables on a rural plot of land in the 1970s.   Organic Cooking for (not-so-organic ) Families will be out soon. Her next project is a book about Grandparenting, and in her spare time, she is plotting a cozy mystery.

 

 

 

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