So This is How to Lose 'Weight'

I've been thinking a lot about fat lately.
I trust this is something most of us 50-somethings think about a lot. It's no great secret that one of the burdens of aging is weight - the accumulation of mass.
But what is irritatingly captivating my interest now is not body mass, it's the accumulation of 'stuff' (or, as my husband puts it, 'crap'). Thirty-plus years of adulthood makes you 'fat' - bloated with the weight of physical stuff and emotional responsibilities that make you less nimble and certainly less independent.
This added weight is evident when, as we did, you decide to make a midlife career and housing change. Nothing makes you appreciate the problem of accumulated mass more than lugging boxes of your mother-in-law's bone china, (the ones you haven't used in 10 years because they're too precious), out of the suburban house's formal dining room, across three states, up three flights of stairs, to your new city apartment sans formal dining room, (where they will be put on the highest, most impossible to reach kitchen shelf, never to be used, because they are too precious),
but, having to leave your 22-year-old daughter and her two older sisters behind in the move.
So here's the deal:  you will accumulate much mass as you age: a very large house, your in-laws' bequests, expensive antique chairs, heavy tarnishing silverware ... things you thought in your youth you just had to have to be happy or that legitimized you as an adult with property. Whatever -- you will curse each and every box of it you move.
Material possessions are the real 'crap' of middle-age accumulated weight. But, here's the irony:  though painful, this crap can be surprisingly easy to dislodge and take with you.
Not so the accumulated emotional ties, the real weight of life.
The more important and truly precious your hard-worked-for 'acquisition', (your family, your friends, your community), the more impossible it is to take it with you.
I think most of us don't make changes in midlife because we know this is true. So what are you supposed to do?
For some of us born with wanderlust, moving seems a natural progression of life. Standing still is not an option. Personally, I blame our genes-- really! I think (and science bears me out) we are imprinted with certain traits passed on by our forefathers. My husband and I come from immigrant parents so home for us is a concept, not a place.
I'm not saying that everyone should or could feel like we do, and I'm certainly not saying it's easy or even admirable. It's just that at midlife, you kinda know yourself, and I know I travel lightly.
I have a dear friend, let's call her Adel (because that's her name), who is a few years older than me and though she grew up and lives in another country, shares much of my nature. When I first met Adel she was approaching midlife and had already moved twice, not just across three states, but across continents and oceans, alternately leaving behind two of her four sons. At dinner in our well appointed NJ home Adel admired (as I'd secretly hoped she would) our furnishings and rich tableware. We struck it off from the start and I remember still her offhand comment that she "once" too cared about decorating, but that it didn't seem all that important anymore.
So, embrace your midlife 'fat', the one that is important to keep. Let go of the 'crap'.

So This is How NOT to Buy a Bed if Your Apartment is a Walk-up

Step one in realizing our midlife adventure as empty nesters was to leave the burbs and move to the city.

This wasn't too hard.  Boston, we were told, moves en-masse every June. Like lemmings and other clueless creatures, Boston's denizen of students habitually vacate and relocate after the end of spring semesters creating an ebb and flow of apartments up for lease.

Not too surprisingly, if one is willing to pay enough, one can find the perfect brownstone apartment in Boston's adorable Back Bay neighborhood across the street from Tom Brady from which to begin this adventure.

The trouble starts when one wants to fill the apartment.

As we painfully learned, a walk-up brownstone in Boston's Back Bay presents a host of "challenges". 

For starters, there's the staircases. Beautiful as they are, they were not crafted for moving furniture.

And so, that's were our adventure stalled -- literally -- on the second landing of a 36" wide staircase. Much like G.O.T.'s valley of the Vale, the staircase was apparently built to halt all intruders, including our awesome Crate and Barrel storage bed.

After struggling for a half hour, the nice Crate and Barrel deliverymen gave us one choice:  return the bed and get our money back.

Which is what we did, opting instead for a C&B bed that comes apart.

But, until the new bed is delivered, here we are..sleeping on a mattress on the floor -- like teenagers.

Lessons Learned:

(1) apartments are not houses -- don't assume all furniture will fit up stairs and through apartment doors (the Crate and Barrel saleswoman who is helping us find a new bed told us one of her clients had to have his table hoisted through a window...);

(2) furniture either comes delivered as one single piece, or many pieces that are put together after transporting - again, the nice Crate and Barrel saleswoman explained that few beds don't come apart -- we were just lucky enough to have chosen one of the few that don't;

(3) buy expensive items from established retailers - they will always treat the customer right!

(4) measure your staircases, doorways and landings when buying furniture for apartments - even if you're over 50 and think you've done this before, you can eyeball it  :)