Bless is More!

By Debbie Havusha

I began my journey of downsizing over 3 years ago.  While driving to Summerland to celebrate our 31^st wedding anniversary I felt a change was in our midst.  With 3 of our 4 children not living at home, I had a plan to do some serious clearing in our family home.  Sorting and purging became a full time job. This laborious, emotional and tiring task took 7 weeks.  The plan was to stage the house in a way that would suit young adults who were either students or young professionals, rent the house furnished, and then rent a furnished apartment.

During the last 3 years we have interviewed and rented to quite a number of tenants from places as far as Australia, Israel, France, Spain, Edmonton and to local Vancouverites.  These individuals made our home their home and we became landlords as we also transitioned into becoming tenants.  With each rental, I needed less and less.  Since we rented furnished units all that came in toe with us were our: clothes, shoes, personal items of comfort, files for bills, work related boxes and some of our favourite kitchen ware.

It was so liberating having less stuff and leaving behind our furnished home for others to use.  My husband Yossi and I got used to live in small units and the desire to have more was not on the agenda.  I was slowly becoming a MAHM, a middle aged happy minimalist.  While respecting and enjoying many of our friends’ larger spaces I had not one iota of envy in any cell in my body.

During this time of enjoying the liberation of less, I also started to recite more blessings that my Jewish heritage has to offer.  And while these blessings became my MAHM blueprint, I was also experiencing on another cellular level the arrival of a cancerous tumour.  ‘Clear Cell Sarcoma’ was the diagnosis of a rare tumour residing below my left knee.  Our furnished apartment was located right near BC’s Cancer Agency.  After enduring 25 radiation treatments and an operation, it was our first round of tenants who threw a party for me when I got out of the hospital.  My excised tumour was no longer renting any space in my leg and walking with the help of a cane, we moved into a ground level 2 bedroom unit, a bigger space to host family and to celebrate the Jewish holidays and the many more blessings that I wanted to recite!

While living in this unit, we submitted plans to the City of Vancouver to build a laneway home back on our family property. We wanted a one level laneway that would have lots of light and place for accommodating 3 main pieces of furniture; a sofa bed, a storage bed and a large dining room table to host Shabbat dinners and Jewish holidays with family and friends.

We chose the table and chairs with great care.  I researched sofa beds with careful attention to comfort.  The storage double bed had to fit into our cozy cocoon of a bedroom.  Welcoming these pieces of functional design was a blessing!

On April 1^st, 2019, Yossi and I moved into our long awaited destination, just in time for Passover.  I feel that we have ‘passed over’ many narrow places and now….it is springtime and a time to enjoy blessings of plenty with plenty of less!  Amen.

Happy Passover to all !