#I could tell this was a carefully staged hoarder house because it takes one to know one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nookishposts · 4 years

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Keepers

I decided many years ago not to have children. I love kids and love spending time with other people’s kids. Children’s choirs with those reedy innocent voices never fail to move me to tears. I was a summer camp theatre arts teacher for a number of years, and I am often the first one to get down on the rug with a wee one learning to crawl. The smell of baby, especially a sleepy one nestled against my chest is the breath of heaven. My choice has nothing to do with kids themselves and everything to do with me. I come from a swamp of family health issues: cancer, heart disease, diabetes and far too many incidents of serious mental illness resulting in a lot of suicides. I felt neither prepared nor compelled to parent , especially given the possible inheritances, and because I had so much growing up of my own to do. At 58, I have no regrets about this. My sister also chose not to have kids for her own reasons. So, effectively our parents contributions to the gene pool will die when we do. If I have any regret at all it’s that my Mum didn’t get the pleasure of grand-parenting, but thankfully she fully supports our choices. I have friends and acquaintances in this world who are absolutely awesome parents, raising kids who will definitely make this world a better one. I am delighted to support those efforts in any way they ask.

Part of the mid-life reflection involves considering legacy; I think some of us will admit to wondering what effect our lives have had, if any at all. Will we be remembered or will our brief tenure on the planet quickly disappear into the ether? We are just minute pinpricks on the greater pointillist picture of Time anyway, so what does it matter?

What got me thinking about this was the process of packing to sell a house, stuff in storage for 3 months and then unpacking it at our final destination. We had done what we thought was a major purge before squirrelling things away, but as we unpacked I found myself thinking : why the heck did I keep this? We all seem to retain some momentos of special times in our lives and that’s understandable, but I came across an awful lot of boxes that had not been opened since we moved to Winnipeg in 2009...for 10 years they’ve just been hauled around next to the necessities of pots and pans and winter boots. Why keep them at all? Watching a bit of Marie Kondo with My Beloved, didn’t help, in fact I found her downright annoying which is not usually like me at all. I guess it felt like she challenged things I wasn’t ready to face.

Some of those boxes I know for sure I will never let go of; the one with the Fair Isle sweater my Grandma made for me, my Grandpa’s service medals, and the first piece of jewelry gifted by a family friend when I was born (Does anybody even remember Sarah Coventry bracelets?)

There are boxes pertaining to my former schools and places of work and trips I’ve enjoyed, volunteers gigs that were impactful, bits of inherited china that I don’t imagine I will ever use: I can admire fine bone china tea cups and saucers, but since I have muscley massage and gardening paws (whereas my sister’s hands are slender and delicate despite being hardworking ) I tend to drop things. My klutziness is legendary. Every one who knows me has a story of how graceless they’ve seen me be. Not everyone you know can achieve a paper cut on their tongue licking a Christmas Card envelope. But I digress.

It is dawning on me that in a way, those boxes validate the person I was becoming. High school year books are full of sentimental awe and angst; look at those hairstyles and remember how we were sure we were “all that” and then some. Achingly fond memories of dances and all night conversations, cheering from the stands wearing school colours with great sense of belonging, the first terrifying day of Grade Nine weighed against walking across the graduation stage such a few years later. Same with college and university; who was that passionate being with boundless energy for learning,who slipped so easily and with such ferocious idealism into 30 years of feminist marches and human rights campaigns? What happened to that young woman who in spite of hating airplanes flew by herself all the way to Australia and back looking to answer some big questions? Or the crazy theater student who performed street mime and Shakespeare, dressing from the second-hand store in androgynous suits carrying a guitar everywhere, hitch-hiking between small -town pubs. Or the one who took a summer to hike the entirety of the Bruce Trail from end to end. It turns out she’s in boxes among the t-shirts and the handbills and the polaroid photos. She in the boxes from the YWCA as Aquatic Director, WUM as a Housing Counsellor, Gomorrah’s as a bookstore employee, The AIDS Network as Director of Volunteers. And in the endless boxes of books; about massage and gardening, and eco-living, and spirituality and cooking and favourite novels by authors whose stories generated both laughter and sense.

But what do I do with it all?

My Beloved and I were laying in bed recently, chatting sleepily as we recounted our day. One of the questions I keep hearing lately in social media is : “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Both of us admitted that we would take only what could fit in a knapsack and travel the World. Which, given that we have spent 11 years looking for the right place to settle down, and have finally found it, is deeply ironic.

I could not fit all of those boxes into my knapsack. The weight of it would crush me. So why, as an armchair traveller am I holding on to them now? I am not a hoarder by a long stretch. But I suspect I have to a need to prove to myself the existence of my being. People with children see themselves looking back at them through the eyes and hair and mannerisms of their offspring, even those not biologically born to them. Grandchildren increase that evidence exponentially and carry the torch forward casting their light into those generations to come. No boxes required. Perpetuating existence proves itself. The stories will survive.

My task now is to decide if I need to hold onto momentos that prove the moments that made me. When I managed a thrift store, I used to wonder at the treasures that came through the doors when somebody decided to clean out an attic. Wartime photos, first edition books, delicate china and silver engraved with initials, diaries, wedding dresses, inscribed jewelry....the sale of those special pieces helped keep the doors of a food bank open and the kids after school programs running, but sometimes it felt sad to me to be putting a thrift store price on something that had once been so precious to someone else. We are collectors, but we inevitably outgrow those collections and the kids and grandkids may not see the same value in what we’ve saved as we did when we carefully boxed things away.

Nobody else is going to want keepsakes from my schools, my travels and my jobs, and they are of no practical use to me now except perhaps as kindling for a bonfire on a starry night. Better they be incinerated in a communal act of warmth and light, perhaps with storytelling, than go into a landfill. There are family heirlooms I will eventually find other homes for among my cousins and their kids I suppose, as they aren’t really wholly mine to dispose of.There are lots of other things that will never mean anything to anybody but me. And as long as I can remember to tell the stories, I suppose those will pack nicely into the knapsack as I travel into this next phase of life as a self-sustaining steward of the Planet. When I can no longer remember the stories, the reminders won’t matter anymore anyway. Best they be dispersed now to do whatever good they might for someone else. Or is that an excuse to just hand off the responsibility? I’m not completely sure.

I am too old to really need the proof that I have lived, and there’s a lot of living yet to do. The accumulation of non-practical stuff needs to stop, and space for new experience needs to be cleared. The garage attached to our home has been converted into a very large workshop space, insulated and heated, with windows and outlets everywhere. The previous owner had amazing tools in there and created amazing things. But we have filled it with boxes. There are 3 giant Tupperware bins of music CDs alone. At least 6 of books. We have more duplicates of tools than we know what to do with. More artwork than we have wall space for. Camping gear that may have reached redundancy now that we live surrounded by woods and 3 minutes from a lake. Things don’t define a person, they never have. But I lulled myself into thinking I needed validation through proof. I have no children or grandchildren to inherit the proof of anything. My ancestors stories will continue through the rest of the family and I can help by being one of the ones committed to writing them down. Electronic storage takes up way less space and is more accessible than a box in an attic. It’s an easier inheritance to manage.

Of course there will be those things I will choose to keep simply because they please me. I’ve a collection of small indigenous carvings of animal spirits that give me great joy to handle. I still have my massage table because I can still do that work if called upon. I will likely get rid of most of the linens that supported it as a business, maybe see if a young masseuse might like some of the books and tools to help set up their own practice. Inevitably, certain things will end up in the bins of a thrift store. The workroom will get emptied and become once more a place of creation; shelves for things we’ve grown and preserved in our gardens, space for my Beloved to set up her loom and spinning wheel. A corner for my desk and a designated spot to see if I can put my money where my mouth is as a writer, to finish a novel and assemble a collection of musings. There needs to be space for Marie Kondo’s idea of “sparking joy” to come from within and take form. Who knows how much travelling we will do, and the various forms that might take. We’ve spent 11 years coming to this place with a very specific way of living in mind and the incredible joy in being here will carry us forward. Joy need not be a collection of inheritances or things amassed; I think I have decided joy can be an acronym for Just Open Yourself. It will not matter if I existed after I am gone, only that I lived in a way that honours the opportunities while I am here now. Those boxes are filled with reminders of amazing past moments, but I hope I am the distillation of those formative gifts, including all of the people and places that challenged me to shed one more layer of shell in order to grow. There is nothing to prove. There’s only what the sum of yesterday can offer today, and if I’m lucky, a series of tomorrows. It all fits in a knapsack.

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