If everything goes according to plan, we will be
closing on the sale of our Simpsonville house in the next few days. It has been
a breathless six months since we first found out that Marc’s job would be
taking us back over the ocean, this time to Switzerland, a place known for its
chocolate, its cheese and its exorbitant housing prices. The AGA, we soon
realized, would not be coming with us. The chances of our being able to afford a house with a kitchen big
enough to accommodate it were slim, and the thought of condemning such a
magnificent stove to a dark storage cell for some unspecified amount of time
made my heart sink.
And so came the decision to sell the AGA in all its
claret glory, and in doing so, we traded its air of comfort and security for an
unknown future in unknown climes. It was dismantled piece by piece and then gently
crated up and carted off one hot summer morning to its new home on the even
hotter coast. Watching the truck pull out of the drive way, I took heart in the
fact that my cherished stove was at least staying at home in the Palmetto State.
A tiny part of me will still be serving up shrimp and grits or crab cakes to
hungry, sun-burnt friends for many years to come. Meanwhile, Marc and I were
left to fill the aching gap in the kitchen and to wonder what new meals were
awaiting us, cooked as they would inevitably be, in foreign places and on
foreign stoves.
We always knew we might not be staying in South
Carolina forever. Marc’s contract with his German employer was initially only
for four years, and somehow, we managed to stretch those out to six. But we had
made the decision when we arrived from Spain to live life in the States as if
we would go on living there forever. So we proceeded to have the AGA installed,
to fill the back yard with flowerbeds and saplings and to enjoy our home and
our friends and the whole of our life there in a thoroughly non-provisional
way. It was, looking back, a brave
decision and a good one, as it asked us to honor deeply the present moment and
to live graciously in the face of an unknowable future.
And so has come the end of an era as we bid farewell
to the stove that fed our hungers for the last six years and to the house which
so generously sheltered us. We do so in great faith and thanksgiving for all
the feasts that have been and for all the feasts that are yet to be.
-- Sabrina Moser, Bellach, Switzerland
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