It has been a season for shedding, as my mom divests herself of that which she no longer uses: the golf clubs, a casualty of a shoulder incapable of even a putt; the car, a potential danger for a woman whose arthritis makes it almost impossible for her to look

over her shoulder.

The author’s parents, Ira and Norma Stabiner; her mother wears a gray dress that has been lost.

When she and her husband of 22 years decided it was time to move out of their isolated, isolating house in Scottsdale, Ariz., and into a place with services, the pace of the

giveaway picked up. It’s simple long division. The accumulated possessions of two people who were married to their original spouses for more than 40 years before widowhood brought them together, the stuff that fills a three-bedroom house and spills out into the garage, will not fit into their new one-bedroom-and-den apartment. Something — many more things — will have to go.

Adult children tend to focus on the housecleaning aspect of this transition, on the marvelous efficiency of move-managers or the exhilaration that accompanies the disappearance of useless belongings. We try to keep it upbeat. To paraphrase a Johnny Mercer/Harold Arlen song that came out just before my parents got married, you’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.

It’s not that straightforward, though, and anyone who has ever cherished a loved one’s hand-me-down — or wondered about the statute of limitations on giving an unwanted item away — knows it.

Editing a life involves deciding the fate of inanimate objects, some insignificant, some imbued with potent memories — and in the superheated atmosphere before a move, offering to pack up the wrong item can seem like disregard for, and to, its owner. It falls to the adult child to listen for the distinction between mere possessions and proof of life, and occasionally to acknowledge the difference.

As I anticipate the arrival in my California home of a beaver jacket I may never wear and three silver platters I may never use, I have to admit that there’s something to be said for selective hoarding; the illogic of these legacies doesn’t bother me at all.

At the outset of the process, months ago, I defined what I thought was a useful and reasonable set of guidelines for what my mom could set aside for me:

* Any plate with “Shenango” stamped on the bottom; that was the line of restaurant china my father and grandfather sold.

* Anything from the 44 years my mom was married to my dad.

* Any book that has even a tangential connection to my family: ones I have written, or the never-opened set of art books my mother and father once purchased because every home needs a set of art books, or the boxed set of classic novels with similarly uncracked spines that no one now seems able to find.

I staked my claim because if anything, my mom seemed too quick to give away our history. Where are my father’s iconic racing ice skates, with their slasher blades and those beautiful, worn mahogany-brown leather uppers? For that matter, where is the dress my mother wears in my favorite photograph of the two of them, a trim, gray wool bodice with a shawl collar over an exuberant gray taffeta skirt?

I had no use for the skates, and I doubt I’d fit into that dress, but I worried that she’d give away another symbol of his eager energy, or of her rare carefree moments.

Two years ago, my mother and I spent a weekend in her garage surrounded by 40 cartons of stuff shipped out from Chicago. At that point, the de-accessioning of goods still had a whiff of comedy to it. We laughed about the sets of table linens in their original packaging, the price tags still attached. We made easy decisions about unused kitchen equipment and sheets that were the wrong size for every child and grandchild my mom had.

Thanks to my sister’s yeoman efforts — she moved to Scottsdale just in time for the transition, though not because of it — the joking is pretty much over. She has reasoned

and urged and insisted, and along the way has dispatched the obvious giveaways to various charities, leaving us with only the difficult decisions, the judgment calls. In the final weeks before the movers arrive, the phone calls increase: I should take the beaver jacket; I should take the mink coat, as the sleeves reach only to my sister’s elbows; and what

about the silver platters and the dessert plates?

Where is my mother going to put the parts of her life that matter to her? It’s a skewed sampling, one that implies an easier life than the one she actually led, but perhaps that’s the point: the abridged version is the one she would like us to recall.

The dessert plates are easy. Grandma Ethel had the ladies up for cake so often that I can still hear her saying those exact words: “I had the ladies up for cake,” she’d begin, and

then launch into the story of who said what to whom. I suggest firmly that my mom take the dessert plates with her, and with no prompting she allows as how she might have the

ladies at the new place up for cake, which gives me an odd thrill. I guess someday I’ll have the ladies up for cake; I imagine my daughter will, too.

In that altered state where time folds over itself and there are four generations on the phone, I find myself agreeing to take the silver platters, a couple of silver candlesticks, the souvenir Bible I haven’t missed since my confirmation, not once, and whichever fur coat

my mom wants to ship.

Fill up a box for me, I say. Go have a good time.

My paternal grandmother’s silver platters and candlesticks are in a carton in my garage, and for now my mother’s platters and candlesticks can sit right next to them. They don’t evoke particularly strong memories for me, but it was hurrying, it was efficiency, after all, that lost us those skates and that gray dress. I understand that memory lives in our hearts, not in our stuff, but this is a big move, with lots of the past in play. It probably doesn’t hurt

to hang onto a few familiar things.