Ep172 Downsizing The Things of Life For an International Move

Angella is packing up her apartment and moving to Panama. The dream is real and the joy is real, but so is the day-to-day grind. Turning off utilities, figuring out bins, deciding what can fit in a pod, and realizing that “excited” sometimes feels like pure logistics. Leslie says she’s “pre-missing” her bestie, and they don’t gloss over how a 50-year friendship shifts when one of them will soon be living abroad 

They are laughing one minute then getting misty the next while discussing the unexpected healing of letting go, and how community rituals and family love make big transitions smoother.

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Transcript

Speed Test Rivalry And Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey Les, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01 0:04

We're starting out this one laughing.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Guys, let me tell you. She's ridiculous. She really don't tell me because they already know.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

You already know.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

I told you how competitive Leslie is, right? Stuff that I could care less about. She's like, ah, ooh, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be twice as good. I'm gonna, okay. You can write it. Okay, I'll let you go in front of me. I don't care. But she's like, wait, what's yours? I'm not telling you.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

So we gotta tell them that I'm laughing so hard because we ran an internet speed test before we started recording. And I just kept beating her every time.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

She's like, wait, let me do it again.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Let me do it again. And she didn't even want to just beat me. She wanted to like double or triple. I wanted to like ate, I wanted to smoke you. And I could care less. She didn't want to show me her results.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

That's not true. It's not true. I wanted to, I wanted to record the podcast because that's why we're here. Not play your silly games, Leslie. Oh my God. How old are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

No game is silly if it's competition. Challenge. Anyway, wow. Welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn.

Packing Up For Panama Move

Pre-Missing And A 50 Year Friendship

SPEAKER_00 1:29

I'm Angela, and that's my former best friend. Leslie. We've been best friends for almost 50 years. And we are two 60-something-year-old free-thinking black women. We're on our joy journey. And we invite you to join us or start your own. And we talk about things that challenge old assumptions. You'll hear me say often that joy is very different than happy. Joy is sustained, it is deep, it is fulfilling, it's not on and off. And sometimes to get to joy, it's hard. But we encourage you as we are we encourage each other to do the hard work to um fulfill what joy is demanding of you. Right. And so today we're going to be talking about uh of a really big thing that I'm doing before Leslie. Oh, oh, there you go. I'm packing up now. Um I am packing up, almost finished packing up my apartment um to start my move to Panama. And um, I'm making a stop for a couple months, but um, I'll be there um after that. And so um I'm gonna be talking about some of what's been going on in the process of selling things and the people that I've met and things like that. And um, you know, it's it's like you probably hear a lot about people moving to different parts of the world, especially black women. Um, some of the folks that we listen to, especially Stephanie Perry, believes that this is um the next great migration of black people outside of the United States. The first being the great migration when um many black people moved from the terror of the southern United States to the northern parts. Um, and so you hear about these moves that black people, black women are doing, um, but you may not always hear about the nitty-gritty, the the process. It's like, yeah, one minute I think, yeah, I'm gonna move Vietnam. Yeah. So joy. I'm excited. I'm I'm joyful that this is what I'm moving towards. Packing ain't joyful. It's not joyful. Um, but at the same time, I am having a really good experience in um uh saying goodbye to some of my things. Some of them I'm giving away, some I'm selling, some I am um keeping. And so I wanted to share some of that. And when I said, Les, let's talk about this, because this is like a big deal that's been going on with me over the last couple of weeks. She had a a spin on it that that we'll be talking about too. So if this is something that you're interested in, stay with us. All right. So, Les, were you itching to say something?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Well, um, I'm just it's a little melancholy for me. It's it's a happy time, you know. It's uh where you are actualizing a an um a plan that we both concocted together, but it's happening for you faster than it's happening for me. And I I just feel I feel something in my, you know, in my innards about it, because it's like it's not like we live next to each other right now, but now you'll be out of the country. And I feel like not abandoned per se, but it's like it's far.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Yeah.

unknown 5:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

You know, I'm I'm doing the I'm pre-missing you.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Is that where the word premise comes from? No. You're pre-missing me. Okay. Missing you. So it's it's it's you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And I know that, you know, the world is small. You're still a phone call away, a plane ride away, or whatever. But you know, I don't know. It just feels different.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

I think you know, you're forging new territories. Go on, go on ahead, go on there, I'm I'm I'll catch up in the rear. That's kind of, you know. So, so I'm really happy that this is happening, you know?

Stress Planning For A One Pod Life

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah, yeah. It's funny, people are asking me, are you excited? And, you know, I have to say, there has been excitement during the process, of course. Um, right now, it's not an excited feeling. Right now it's uh, oh my God. Okay, I gotta make the arrangements. What I gotta turn off my utilities. Oh, I gotta, you know, do I have enough bins? Do I keep this? Do I, you know, how much space do I have? Where the cell, it's that. So it's I excited isn't the word that I would use for right now, for right now. Um, but it will become excited when things settle down and all of the planning is in place. The other thing though, it's this is not a typical move.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

You know, a typical move, you know, a person moves from one place to another and they move all their things with them and whatever. But you are literally like unloading your whole life and keeping what maybe you've done a lot of whittling down when you moved from the large home to the apartment. But now you're you're you're slimming it down even more. I am, you know, and um it's like your entire life is gonna be in one little pod. Yeah. You know?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I mean, you've been very intentional about for the last four or five years of not accumulating things that you want to hold on to.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

You know, and weeding things out, and it's like, wow. I just look at you and I'm like, I could never do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

I could never do that. Um, the our our last or maybe two episodes ago, we talked about oh, stuff we thought we could never do, like me giving up rice and and you giving up alcohol. And that's how some of those things that may seem really silly, that's how you kind of learn, yeah, you can. Yeah, you can. You think you can't until you do it. And then it's like, yeah, I don't know why this always comes to me. It's like, you there was a time when you never thought you could tie your shoes. Like I never thought that.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

I just wondered why are these shoes untied and when is mom gonna tie them? It's just, you know. But um, but but you learn. You learn and yeah, and we have enough experience to know that we bring not just stuff with us, but we bring ourselves with us when we move. So our skill sets, our minds, and our abilities to acquire things if we need them. Right. And you know what I mean. It just wow, it almost feels like Marie Kondo and steroids. And you know, I you know I'm I mean, like, I'm like, you're giving that up, you're giving that up. And all I want to do is like, can I take a box?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

This is what this is what has been going on. Oh, that's nice. Can I have it? It's like don't let me cuss at you, Leslie. You cannot, you cannot. And I'm helping Leslie to start whittling down because you know, she had a couple storage units there, so we are down to one. We're down to one straight, which is huge, Les.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

You know, for but in all honesty, we did gain an apartment.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

I do have an extra apartment.

A Healing Way To Let Go

SPEAKER_00 9:43

That part. Exnate on the apartment on the apartment. Yeah, but that's that's for another reason. That's for another reason. But um, so um the first thing that left was the couch and then the dining room and then um, you know, just I don't even know when it was. A couple of years ago, we did an episode on um the experience of selling the things that I moved out of my um five-bedroom home into storage as I was trying to move into this light way of living. And um, just to summarize, it was a really um traumatic experience for me because of how the estate um sale people handled my things and handled me. It was really traumatic. Um and this experience now, and the reason why I wanted to talk about it, is really like um a bomb. It's really very different. Um, I'm meeting people who I'm selling my items to and really like connecting with people. It is ridiculous. I'm hugging people, a few people we share phone numbers. Yes, we share phone numbers, we, you know, just we're talking about our families. I mean, there are people, I've met people from these here United States, I've met people from um Ecuador, from Mexico, from um from Chile, just all over. One person actually is originally from the Dominican Republic, but she moved here from Minnesota, which is where I'm going to for um a couple months. And it's just been this amazing um uh almost like a transfer of the some of the things that I've brought into my home that I really love. And now I know where they're going to be living. Oh, that's a special thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

It's it's so it's so cool. That um getting rid of things that are so dear to you, you know. Exactly. They have a good home or someone to care for them.

Keepsakes Found Hair Letters Jamaica Coat

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Right. Know how meaningful they are. Yeah. Exactly. And the experience that I had before, um, I I don't even know. Most of my things probably ended up in the in a landfill somewhere because if it's I'm not gonna go revisit that. Maybe we'll link to that episode. Um, but I feel like this is a little big gift from God, just that this experience has been so um so positive. Um going through all the things, I actually found my first son, his hair from his first haircut. I know that's does that sound weird?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Like um no, not to me, but it does sound weird. Okay. It's weird, but you know, I I think it might be a cultural thing because I have Omari's hair.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

You have it too. Well, um it's gonna be a little get a little weirder, but I wanna find a way to I wanna find a way to um use it into something that I make for him. Like, I don't know if you guys know about felting where I won't go into this.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Sounds like silence of the lambster.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Leslie, please.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Enough. I wanna I wanna find a way you're gonna have that grown man wear something self made from his he need not know.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

He need not.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

I'm gonna tell him if you do it.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

He need not know. He's gonna be he's gonna know whips it off as well. He's gonna know.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Don't do that. Don't do that. But anyway, yeah, you might be up cycling a little too far.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

A little too far. Okay, all right. Well, um uh I am also there there's some um some uh letters that I have uncovered that I haven't seen in a long time, and I'm taking a little time to just really be with my things. Oh, I have the coat that my mom when we um when we immigrated from Jamaica in 1970. Um my mom and my eldest brother met us at the airport with coats, right? Because it was December and very cold. And I have that coat. Oh I have that coat. I'm never gonna give that up. I'm never going to. So I had it away somewhere. I didn't even remember that I had it. Well, it showed itself again and all those memories flooded back, and yeah, and I still have it. I I would have had it next to me so I could show it to you guys, but I have that coat, and um so it's just been it's just been really lovely seeing my things again and um and not having a lot of sadness uh around it, even though I'm saying goodbye to things. I don't feel, you know, it's just okay, this is this is what the next phase requires of me.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

So that's a good way of looking at it.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

So so I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

I don't know if I if it'll be that way for me. What do you think it'll be like? I would try to take so much of my things with me. You know, I I am one of these people that like a visual person, like the things that are you know me. I I I have clothes from 35, 40 years ago that I still wear, you know, that are in my closet in my rotation. So I hold on to things and I care for them, but I hold on to things for a long time. And I know that I will not, in fact, now I do not need the volume of things that I have.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

But getting rid of them is is it will be difficult. You know, maybe, well, you know, you have helped me in the past. If you when you come and say, do you need this? You know, if you help me weed things out, that's true. But doing it on my own, I'm kind of struggling a little bit.

Choosing Sean With Prayer And Trust

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Okay. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna help you. I'll I'll come back. Yeah, I know you are. I'll come back and help you. Because I it it it isn't easy. I don't want to suggest that it's easy. I think um because I've been on this uh on this um um changing the relationship that I have with with some of the things, with many of the things that I've accumulated, um, has been a few years for me now that I've been kind of processing that mentally. So um, but it it's hard. It's hard. And I'm putting all my things into into bins. And um one person that I wanted to give a shout out to is a young man that I met today. His name is Sean, and he is going to be coming and packing up my things and actually driving them to um my next stop where I'm gonna be for a couple months. And um I another person that I met met on this journey, um, just as um, you know, when you meet a young person who, as we would say, someone who was raised wealth, um, really grounded, um, you know, doing doing things that are entrepreneurial. And I said to him, you know, I'm not doing this because you're charging less. If you think that that amount of money makes a difference to me, it does not. I'm doing it because I'm supporting your dreams. And that is the importance of it for me. And so I have, I want to make sure that, you know, you're taking care of everything, that you have your insurance in place and all of those things. Um, but you will have someone who will give you good references, who will give you a nice review and all of those things. And he really, really stepped up. I mean, the move hasn't happened yet, but so far, um, I'm I was really impressed with him. And um and I said yes. I said yes to the truck. I said yes to the truck.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

That's true. I actually turned my um speaker off because I'm having like household noises. I heard come on, I hear the refrigerator going. It's like, what is happening? What in the world? Um, so sorry for the background noise.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

That's okay. I didn't really hear it because I was talking.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, but also because I turned the speaker off one second. Oh, yeah, right. That part. You did say that, didn't you? Oh, and well, well, you know, I I think that's really great. Um leave it to you to make a move like this into another, to take this move into another level. You know, it's like most of us we we stay right here, right here. And then you just elevate it just so, you know, like level 2.0, 2.5, you know, it's like now it's like my things are curated and I now have to hand it over to the mover and I need to bless you with a review and with this. And but but if you're thinking of these things, I like that because um I FaceTime you while you were speaking to him, so I got to see him. You know, you're telling a young man what you expect of him. Yes, it's you know, this is not just a typical move. These are my personal items that I am entrusting to you. So I think that's special.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah. And I said, you know, um, you're not moving my jewelry, but you're moving this coat that I've had um for over 50 years. Um is it over? Yes, over 50 years, and it has a special meaning for me. And so, you know, um, and we actually talked for a little over an hour, and he talked to me about his family, and um, and um he he is he's in the middle, he has three older sisters and three younger sisters, and I have this whole theory about um men who are raised around um sisters primarily, that in my experience, they're just very well-rounded. They are better at um managing um their emotions and their egos in my experience. So I shared that with them, and it was kind of like um, you know, me, I prayed before this meeting. Um, I did not want to go into something that I felt anything but peace about, and so I asked God um for that to give me peace and let me know so I wouldn't be in this kind of um uh um doubtful situation. Sure. And as he spoke, there were so many things. And I was like, okay, God, I see that. I see that. I see that. Just little things. Just little things, you know, that I noted. And, you know, from New York, okay, from Brooklyn particular. Just little things. This is me and God. It don't have to make sense to anybody else. But I know. I know what he was saying to me. And that it was in answer to my prayer request for peace. Yes. And so now I can say yes to him without any reservation. And, you know, I actually paid him half, and I'll pay the rest in a few days. And so I'm I the commitment is made. The commitment is made.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

For you. Yeah. For you. Yeah. No, that's a big weight. Funny that you should say that. I was thinking when you said that he is a boy in the middle of he has two, well, in your case, three younger sisters and three older sisters. Ricardo is in the middle of two younger girls and two older girls.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

You know. And maybe that's why he, you know, relates to the world and me in that way, in such a sensitive way.

Farewell Rituals Family Help Forward Joy

SPEAKER_00 23:14

I believe that. I believe that. It's listen, you notice things when you've been, you know, looking and observing for as many years as I have. And I I think that is true. Yeah, yeah. Um, so I guess what I want to just like um say about this big this big move. And um I I I have been getting really emotional. Um uh some of my friends here have had um one was a was a was a dinner and you know, gifts and reminiscing and things like that. And another was a more intimate in a friend's home. Uh thank you again, Carla, for um we did a ceremony. I forget what it's called. I'm gonna um put the the the word in the description, but it's basically a ceremony where you you have um uh different things that indicate sweetness or or or um uh things that are grounding. So she had available to the group rice, um uh gummies, chocolate chips, um bay leaves, I think is supposed to be a part of it too. And basically um they talk to me and they tell me about their dreams for me. Oh and they put it, they put it in this bowl. She put hat put it in this bowl, and then at the end of it, you burn it, and it kind of goes up into you know the ancestors um that that um your wishes. And I did the same for her a few years ago when she um spent a few years working in Japan. And so, you know, these kind of um, yeah, so these these these rituals, and I was telling her how meaningful it was for me because one of the things that that we lost in the middle passage are a lot of the rituals that were in our communities in in the motherland, and um to bring any of these um rituals that we can um reestablish for ourselves here, it was really meaningful um for me. And so tears are being shed, my tears definitely on this journey too. And um it's it's it's just it's just been beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

And talk about something that you expressed to me about your sister and your niece coming. Oh my gosh. How that now I'm gonna cry.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

So yeah, my sister, shout out to Jess and Maya, came down and um they came with a truck, right? Because um they were planning to take the bed that I had in the in the guest room. And um it turned into, it was supposed to be like for two days. I think they stayed four days. We had so much fun together. And by the end, they had they took so much of what I needed gone. Um and it was it was a lot of fun because I'm like, look, do not take anything that you're going to just take and clutter your home. Whatever you're gonna put in, if you're gonna take a bed, you're gonna remove a bed. So they made that commitment to replace instead of just adding adding two. Um, but uh like I had um I'd already given away some of my tools, right? So we're taking the bed apart and I didn't have a pair of pliers. Um, I tried it with my jewelry, pliers didn't work, um jewelry making pliers. So we needed a pair of pliers. Well, we went to Ace Hardware, because you know I'm not going to the other big block, big, big box hardware stores. Um, and next door was where I usually usually get my eyebrows threaded. So um we went over there. And it was just this mix of staying on task and also having fun together um in um Durham, which is a city that I have really, really come to love. And so we created some memories around that, which um I think you know it wasn't a planned thing that they were they were gonna come, right? Um initially we were just gonna meet halfway between us, and my sister said, um, you know, Ange, this is probably gonna be the last time I see you um before you leave the country, and I really wanna, you know, not have it just be this kind of quick dinner, yeah. Yeah. So um she agreed to come down and we we just had a really a really sweet, sweet time. Um and I will cherish that for sure. For sure. Nice. I'll put some pictures in of the shenanigans that we had down here. I'm getting emotional. So we need to it's a thing. It's uh it's a big deal. It's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

You know, I when you told me that story about Jazz, I told you how much I noted and appreciated the family connection and just the connections in general that we maintain as our as we get older over the years. I know many older people or people our age not older um who have become a little bit more um lived more in solitude, you know, as we get older or become a little more frail or dependent or whatever. And very often older people's lives constrict into, you know, um your friends may die off or you're you may not maintain the connections that you have, but it is during these particular times not reserved for just funerals and homegrowing services, yeah, but it's these um momentous occasions in our lives where we will continue living, yeah, but making these large transitions, that these connections are really meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

They are. They are, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um I I I'm really hopeful that um there's gonna be a lot of visiting and um maybe the weather will draw people to to come and and visit me more often than um than if I were going to a seasonal or colder climate. Um but I I do anticipate a lot of people visiting. Um we kind of selected a place that can accommodate guests and and um where there's gonna be a lot to to do. And it's uh it's just a really um this this is where my joy is leading me. And there's a real kind of foundational stability that I feel in that even though there's so much change going on, yeah, um, I know it's it's a means to an end, and the end is uh a more joyful place.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Wow. Yes. Well, may the Lord continue to bless you and bless this transition that you go through to get there, and you know I'm I'm right along with you. Yes, you are, yes, you are. Thank you, Les.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Okay. Come on. Come on. Say something funny. Say something funny. I know you don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah, no, it's it's just it's it's just weird. It's bitters bittersweet. Yeah, yeah, it is, it is bittersweet, but but it ends in sweet, so that's yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Exactamente. Exactamente.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

All right. Well, this has been another episode of Black Boomer Basties from Brooklyn, Brooklyn.