A gift for my niece.

In the next few weeks, I am moving back to my parent’s home, a home I haven’t lived in for over three years. Though I’m sad to leave the comfort and normalcy of my apartment, I am so looking forward to stepping outside each morning to watch the sun rise over the Sierra Nevada, to warm my feet by a wood stoked fire, to clean flower beds and feed dogs. It shall be a temporary move, a window to allow me to prepare for a cross-country move, to save money and to ready myself for what I’ve been working towards the past six years. It’s a bittersweet goodbye to my wonderful parents, people who have raised me to appreciate the value of a dollar, to look at the world from an aware perspective, who have cheered me on when no one else would.

But, going from a two bedroom, two bath apartment to a tiny room on the side of a hill takes some downsizing. In the process of packing (or de-cluttering?) I have found many items I purchased long ago, in hopes of making gifts and mementos. Instead of tossing, or spending, I’m trying to use or reuse items. The first, a ceramic pig, I purchased for my now almost year old niece, a year ago.

Simply painted, I hope she uses this piggy through her adolescents to save for important things, like nail polish, and ribbons, and bangles. I hope at ten, she empties it to buy my sister a well-deserved Mother’s Day gift, at sixteen she prays over it, gathering enough spare change for concert tickets. I hope as it gets moved over and over around her room, she knows that her auntie–though far away–loves her and wants nothing but sunshine and happy days for her.