The thing about my childhood home was that even though it
was small—with every closet and cupboard packed—to a child there was a potential
for the discovery of unexpected treasures.
I remember the pantry, long and deep, with a wall of upper
cabinets and huge heavy bottom drawers I could hardly joggle back into place.
Nevertheless, I loved to explore and organize the shelves. I marveled over the ruby-colored
dessert cups that caught shafts of light and the stacks of Grandma’s green
embossed dishes crammed alongside rougher items like waffle irons, hammers and a
gun or two lodged up against the water heater in the far corner.
Why did no one care that these treasures were relegated to
such an ignominious fate? Hidden away. Unused. Unappreciated.
I think it was the discovery of my sister’s coconut that shed
some light on the matter for me.
My older sister had gone off in search of her fame and
fortune—or, more likely, her husband—when I decided to clean out the closet we
had shared for years. I pulled down a box she’d left behind and peered in. The
crude grin of a monkey carved from a coconut shell leered at me. Hard candle
wax dripped down its head. Long, molding, stringy hairs fuzzed the sides. The
remnants of a withered corsage and fake-flower lei collared its base like a
burial wreath.
What prom date—what stolen kiss or intrepid touch had caused
her to pack away this garish Hawaiian-themed prom memento? What touching memory
did she hope to linger over at some future time?
And how long was my mother going to put up with storing her
grown children’s left-behind stuff?
Stuff. Whether it’s your kids’ or your own, if it’s in a box
or packed in an attic or closet, it’s stuff. As long as you have the room and
aren’t planning on moving or aging, stuff is no problem. But sooner or later, the
Second Law of Thermodynamics kicks in and like everything else, stuff starts
falling apart. You can toss it. Try to pass it on to the kids (who may not actually
be interested in grandma’s thick-legged table or pink carnival dishes.) Or you
can face it head on with the grim determination of the Terminator and decide to
jettison The Stuff.
The latter is easier if you are not much of a collector to
begin with. But if you are inclined to hold on to every ball of yarn, every
book you’ve ever read and every cutesy craft project your kids made—including
the plaster of Paris handprint from your 40-year-old’s first-grade, then this
downsizing is going to be painful business.
You could, (as my coconut saving, you-never-know-when-you’re-going-to-want-this
sister did years later when she moved from a rambling Victorian to a small
condo) invite a ruthless non-collector sister or friend to help you sort and
toss.
Or, you could begin ahead of time and play the make-three-piles
game: I love it, I’m not sure, I definitely don’t want/need it. This is a
useful approach because items can migrate from one pile to another, and the
process can be repeated as each layer is shuttled off to the local ministry
thrift shop.
I’ve moved a lot and I’m not a collector. Still, each move
has required a shedding of sorts to accommodate not only my new physical
surroundings, but also the identity I’ve imagined for that time and place.
When my husband, daughter and I drove from New Jersey to
Guatemala, I allowed us each one trunk of precious possessions. Besides some
necessary household items I didn’t think I could find there, I chose my
mother’s crocheted table runner, a small vase, and a few pictures. I wanted to
be able to open my bag and create a spot of instant beauty in my adobe house.
The house we just built is about 800 square feet smaller
than our previous one. Do you have any idea how much stuff you can fit in that
space! Unsentimental as I am, downsizing is difficult. It still was hard to decide what was important. But
at this stage of my life I knew I wanted less—less to clean, less to remember
where it is, less to leave for my kids to deal with.
I decided beauty is important to me. So is efficiency. Form
and function. Keeping the vision of clean white walls and uncluttered spaces
before me, I grew my give-away mound to painful proportions. (Donating a lot to
the local ministry thrift eased some of the pain, as did giving my daughter the
wooden crate full of her wooden blocks I’d held onto for thirty years.)
Full disclosure: I still have some of Grandma’s green
embossed dishes and Mom’s crocheted table runner.
Beauty.
And blessings with deciding on your Stuff,
Marcia
As always, I love your writing. You have a gift of expression, for sure! I can see your Mother's pantry, and hot water heater tucked in the corner. (I feel like I'm snooping, a little.) Whatever happened to your sister's garish grinning coconut monkey?
ReplyDeleteHaHa.I chucked it.She never noticed.
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