Two-car garage

On a summer's day two decades ago, Darling Husband and I had a date: off to the Sears store we went, where the big lug took my hand an led me to the tool department and told me to pick out a table saw. As if I wasn't in love with him before, I fell head over heels all over again. Over the years, it has seen use, building ash nightstands to hold up lamps from the pottery down the lane from where we held our wedding dinner in La Borne; new bathroom cabinets for an astoundingly turquoise 60s bathroom; a custom shelving unit in the kitchen to hold my cookbooks in style; a play kitchen that both boys have outgrown.

But lately, the saw has seen precious little use: there are only so many pieces of furniture we can fit in the house, and so many hours in a day (and there seem to be fewer of those, not sure if it's age or kids or both).

If you drive into any American town, there on the outskirts, next to the freeway entrance, you'll see them: storage facilities. Drive through neighborhoods, and you'll see them too, attached to houses: garages, with cars parked in front of them. We have a car parked on the street, largely because of the table saw (and the wood stockpiled next to it, leftovers from projects that might come in handy someday).

And so it was time. The new car needed a place to sleep and charge at night, and it made no sense to park the other one outside. The scraps turned out to be enough to floor the hallway and build a shed to house the push mower (in the backyard, where it is used). But there was just no room for the big saw.

For the most part, this purge of stuff has been uplifting, leaving me feeling lighter and free (and padding my wallet with 20-dollar bills). But I'd been lying if I said that saying goodbye to an inanimate chunk of steel was easy. I will miss the dimming of the lights when it revs up, the whirr of the motor, the sound of the blade biting into wood, and even the mound of sawdust.

The giant plum tree overhanging the drive has been pruned, the car charger installed, and a shiny new garage door opener lets the red car cruise silently in. As for the saw, it has moved to a house on the islands, to find second life building someone's dream home for his retirement. I wish them both well.