The news is out. I am selling my home and moving to an apartment. How to react to this? So many friends ask me why? I am a bit embarrassed to admit how much I love my house – its shapes, its colours, its views and glimpses of growing things from every window, its sympathetic surfaces. But it is becoming harder to manage and my knees will no longer permit me to do my own gardening. Old houses require almost constant maintenance and if it is not a fence or a lock it is a light globe in a room with a 12 foot ceiling or ongoing worries with electronic connections and cabling. A consolation is that of course my cherished pieces and paintings will come with me, I will no doubt create a new environment that pleases me, and who knows, I may love the changed aspect just as much. But I am allowing myself these weeks of gentle mourning before I accept that change means ‘different’ and almost certainly means letting some things go.
