The last month has been filled with new beginnings and big endings. While I have been here in Pt. Mugu with Sara and the boys, Bob has been in Fallon packing up his 45+ year collection of “man stuff”. Before we left on our big journey a little over two years ago, we purged and packed up 2240 square feet of our house and moved it into his shop out back. Over that period of time on the road we came to the realization that while we didn’t yet know where we wanted to settle down for our “re-started” years, we knew it wouldn’t be in Fallon. So the decision was made to sell our house. Fortunate for us, the wonderful family that has been taking such loving care of the house and gardens while we have been gone, have decided to buy it. Now that we were getting down to the final weeks to closing on the sale, the time came to condense even more.
I wish I was there to help him, but honestly, the majority of what he is working on are his treasures that need to be consolidated and I couldn’t have made the decisions for most of it. However there sure have been some moments of “Do we really need 14 chairs that don’t really match anything"?”, “Are you SURE you have to keep —insert (SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT TO ME) here—?”. There have been some tense conversations, but there have also been some really good ones as we work through where our plans will take us for the future.
I haven’t lost sight of how extremely hard this has been for Bob though. His shop out back has been his refuge. 1800 sq feet of HIS space. Many a night I would call him in for dinner, only to see him for the 15 minutes it took to eat, then he would get back out there to continue a project. When Sara was in High School it was the gathering place for many a teenage boy. They would stop by in the late afternoon to pick his brain about a motorcycle or car problem and end up staying for dinner because they hadn’t gotten enough “Bob time”. It was the bar area for the beautiful reception in our back yard for our daughters wedding, and the one place he could blare his music and no one would ask him to turn it down. There was plenty of room for his buddies to come over and have a beer as they figured out how to pack up the bikes and gear for whatever adventure was coming their way. It was his space. His area to spread out and surround himself with the things that made him happy and content.
We always called our home “The House that Bob Built”. From clearing the acre that was filled with alfalfa, till the day we moved in, he touched every part of it. We thought it would be our forever place, and that his shop would always be his playroom. It’s hard to let go.
