"So we loaded up the truck and moved to Cannon Falls ... "

If you had seen our little caravan traveling eastward across southern Minnesota this weekend, you might have thought the Beverly Hillbillies were moving to Cannon Falls.

No, it was actually my family moving most of my worldly goods into a storage unit. After a brisk day of sales at a garage sale at my sister Amy's house, Saturday was a disappointment and Sunday was less than that. So we put our time to good use moving my things into storage. The many boxes and bundles lived in the auxiliary garage and one part of the basement for months. When Amy and her husband, Jerry, and daughter Lenyn moved into the house two years before, we hatched a plan for me to convert the walk-out basement into an apartment. But I put my house in St. Paul on the market just as real estate began its nose dive and I had little interest -- much less a sale -- in the four months it was on the market. The boxes just collected dust in the meantime.

Moving them into an official storage unit made my upcoming move to Jerusalem seem more real. The money I paid ... er, charged ... for a year of storage sure seemed real. And more or less closing the door on our basement apartment dream was a dose of reality.

It was a deeply bittersweet experience -- sweet because of the way my family pitched in to help me overcome one major hurdle; but bitter because I'd soon be leaving this dear family for two years. And no matter that I had been dissatisfied -- the move put me one page closer to the end of a chapter in my life. If it's true that one can miss even a chronic pain when it's gone, there will be more than a tear or two shed for my 11 years in St. Paul.