Transitions

The hardest thing I’ve had to part with for our upcoming move to New York City was my Browning .22 short, smokeless rifle – a rifle my father and I shared for years. Daddy bought the gun in 1957, the year I was born; the sleek, exquisitely-balanced and handsomely-oiled rifle felt wonderful in your arms. If ever a gun could be called elegant, delicate, it was this Belgium-made Browning .22.  Many a cool, fall Kentucky afternoon my Daddy and I would take it deep into the woods on my grandparents’ farm and shoot at targets – never animals – for hours. Only in 2001 did it become just my gun after Daddy passed away on a bright September morning just four days short of 9/11.  Until today, the rifle was the most concrete item left of my transition from a small-town Kentucky girl who loved nothing more than target practice on a cool fall day to a 22-year-old young woman who boldly moved to Gainesville, Florida to work in sports during the infancy of intercollegiate women’s athletics to a 50+ year-old woman who along with her husband has dreamed of leaving the South and embracing the New York City urban lifestyle. Today, I sold the rifle. It hurt.

It’s not easy coming to grips with leaving behind the tangible parts of a life lived in a small town that still boasts “2,000 happy people and a few soreheads,” but I also understand that a 572-square-feet New York apartment will only hold so much. While I certainly collected items during our 34+ years in Gainesville, these are surprisingly easier to part with – it is the items still left from my childhood that are the hardest to let go of. It’s not just the gun; it’s other items: a butter mold with a pineapple design that belonged to my grandmother who shares her name with our oldest daughter; a vintage popcorn popper that I’m sure my Mommy and her siblings held over an open fire on brisk winter nights, mouths watering awaiting the white kernels popping from the corn they had raised that summer; a quilt my great-grandmother made during the Depression. Or what about the dozens of pieces of Fostoria crystal my Mommy saved for more than 60 years – glasses, pitchers, vases my brothers and I bought from a downtown clock shop each December while snow flurries swirled through the air. I still remember the dark, musty clock shop where every 15 minutes a cacophony of chimes, coo coos and buzzers would intrude upon the quiet. The sparkling crystal didn’t quite seem to belong.

So today, I parted with my rifle, our rifle. Next week we’ll leave behind the popcorn popper, the Fostoria, the butter mold, the wreath my Mommy so lovingly decorated for our guest bathroom.  Although we’ll walk out of the house without these items, they will – thankfully – live in my memory.