I look at our house. I try to see it through my daughter’s eyes in decades to come when we’re gone. I see how it looks like my grandparents’ house all the times I visited after leaving home. Picking out items, I think, “Is this something so old that another person would say, ‘Oh, geez, what did they keep this for?’” I’m looking for the line indicating old age. “Have I crossed it yet?”
I saw my Aunt Edith’s house after she was gone. Ancient things squirreled away from the 1930s and 1940s. Things of sentimental value that never found another home. Things that should have been tossed long ago. A partially broken vase or glass of some sort that landed in the garage or basement and never moved.
Is this what our house looks like? Will it look more like that in another 20 years? Most likely. Although, I know the transition is slow from active to sedentary to still life. For those living it, it hardly appears to move. Is this what lies in store?
That envelope with my grandfather’s writing. He seldom wrote. I can’t part with it. Another will look at it and think, “Why did she keep this?” I was always surprised Grandpa knew how to spell my name because he never wrote it. Ridiculous, I know. He’d be hurt. Still, his handwriting is precious to me. It won’t be to my daughter. She probably won’t recognize it.
I have his pins from various organizations. I have my Granny’s purse. There is a plastic container with the things she kept around her chair in those last years. If I open it and stick my nose in, I can still smell her. After touching a few items, I quickly close it to preserve her smell. Until when? Yes, the container will still be here intact when I die.
There are boxes hidden under the stairs with childhood items. I have carted them around for 40 years. Once, Ronnie said she’d help me go through them. After two boxes of time travel, I came down with a raging headache and sick stomach for two days. We both vowed never again. Unless we move once more, they will also remain for our daughter to dispose of. She will never know the power of memory in those boxes. This is a good thing. Otherwise, no one could ever get rid of anything.
Pictures of Ronnie’s parents adorn pride of place on the buffet. The very same buffet that lived in my mother’s house, transferred to my grandparents’ Vashon Island beach cabin, finally resting in our dining room. My daughter will appreciate the pictures but the buffet? Who knows?
There are things Ronnie has perched on ledges. I have forgotten their significance. I’m not a decorator. My trinkets lean towards two major league baseballs, a clay wizard made by Alex, and a wire boat given to me by a dear friend. Everything matters and nothing matters. It depends on whose eyes are observing.
We have vases. “That one was Granny’s, right?” We have bowls, baskets, and candlestick holders. We have our various piles of collected stuff under the coffee table that would take a few minutes to sort. If we’d have known what to do with it, it wouldn’t have landed in that pile in the first place. We have things that seemed like a fun activity at the time. Jig saw puzzles, puzzle and drawing books, drawing accoutrements.
Ronnie often comments on my bedroom closet. In addition to clothing and shoes, it is also a file cabinet for things I want to lay my hands on quickly but secretly. Periodically, I clean it or reorganize it. I keep the doors closed. Ronnie peered in this week and said, “The amazing thing is that no matter how many times you sort it, it never changes.” Indeed. That’s why I keep the doors closed.
She also doesn’t really know exactly what’s under the stairs. Obviously, things that don’t require quick access or any access at all over decades. I look around our house trying to see through a stranger’s eyes or the eyes of my daughter in a distant future. Ronnie just told me there are blankets under the stairs she’d like to get rid of. “The problem is I’d have to run the gauntlet with you.”
“Things under the stairs are better left under the stairs!” I insist, “There is a door after all.”
“It’s a station problem.” A comment related to my grandparents’ three story gas station living abode. “It’s a Mustang problem.”
“Oh, I should tell them about the Mustang.” I’m writing this as I talk to her.
The Mustang. My grandparents gave me a used 1969 Mustang for my high school graduation. It was the most astonishing gift I ever received. I kept that car for 20 years. I treasured that car. I learned auto repair because of that car. Ronnie called it a shrine. Whenever I couldn’t get rid of something, Ronnie would say, “Let’s put it in the Mustang shrine.” It was a not so subtle dig at my tendency for grandparent mementos.
Ronnie moved to Olympia from New York City. It was harder to cart stuff across country to live in our house. My grandparents were just up the road at the station. Every time I visited Grandpa, he’d take me down in the station basement and try to give me stuff he’d collected. After attempting to say no repeatedly, I finally gave up. If I said no to one thing, he’d just look disappointed and wander around looking for something else. I resolved to take the items straight to the Goodwill on my way home. I didn’t even take them out of the car. After all, how many yard rakes, not quite broken shovels, coffee pots, and barely functioning toasters does one need? He also had an impressive collection of electric motors. I just needed one for my grinding wheel and rotating wire brush. There was no point in telling him about the Goodwill. At least, his gifts are being used by someone.
Having survived the Depression, he was a consummate recycler. He was not a use and dispose of person. Ronnie and I still laugh at his used sandblaster for renewing old spark plugs. Most people would just buy new spark plugs. Not Grandpa. He’d demonstrate its effectiveness on an old spark plug any chance he got. “See how this works? Brand new.”
“Wow, Grandpa.” He built an elaborate aluminum can crusher for his one man recycling donations. He collected cans to take to the recycler for money to donate. Because they paid by the pound, the more he could pile in the bed of the truck the less money went to gas. He tired of using a sledge hammer to crush them when his legs wore out. Hence, his belt driven machine as tall as he was that squeezed the cans. I wish I had a picture.
Ronnie has different kinds of collection issues. Her people came from small city apartments instead of big buildings. She never saw a rubber band that wasn’t worth keeping. We have a basket of rubber bands. They don’t age well. It falls to me to toss them when they come off the broccoli. If Ronnie gets her hands on them, they collect on doorknobs. I don’t know why this is a thing. And string! We inherited a big ball of pieces of string her father had collected and tied together over the years. Who uses string anymore? Alex will inherit the majority of that ball of string as well as a collection of rubber bands. I’m sorry, Alex, I can’t help you with this.
When Shirley died, Ronnie’s mom, it took five of us over seven days working eight hours a day to unload her two bedroom one bath apartment. She had two closets and untold drawers of clothing. After trying on and sorting, we filled a neighbor’s car with clothes for the county’s donation project multiple times and hardly made a dent.
Ronnie joked Shirley never saw a piece of paper she didn’t like. We had two shredders going for hours daily to get rid of the paper. We actually burnt up a shredder. We still have a 75 year old prescription pad from Ronnie’s uncle Sidney in New York who is long dead. Another thing we can’t get rid of. Who gets rid of a prescription pad? You never know when forgery will come into vogue.
Every year when we visit Ronnie’s cousins, Shiffy and Shavey, in Montreal, Ronnie comes home determined to get rid of stuff. They have lived in their house for 75 years. It is filled over the brim with collections of stuff. Shiffy was a fabric dumpster diver for quilting. Shavey has collections of computers, keyboards, desk lamps, drills, and the like. The best we have done upon our return is institute a policy that if something comes in the house something must leave. We always have a giveaway box. It still feels like we’re barely treading water.
Are we old? Our collections have definitely met the threshold.
I find myself needing a thumb tack. I know where they are. They’ve been there for years in an old plastic butter container in the buffet. In the container, I find thumb tacks, several old eraser heads that fit on the end of a pencil, and an occasional paper clip. As I pick out the kind of thumb tack I want, I find myself shaking my head and thinking, “Old people. What can you do?”
We all accumulate stuff if we haven’t moved too often or cleaned it out. Those thumb tacks with blue paint on them? It’s from when we painted our house twenty years and two houses ago! Those thumb tacks are useful and keep following us around. We tried to put them in the shop once but then couldn’t find them when we wanted them. Back in the buffet they went.
I have important items in odd places that made sense in one house at one time. I don’t dare move them to a more sensible place! Then, I’d have to look in multiple places before I realize they should just stay where I can find them. Ronnie and I have had conversations about where something might be. “Well, I know where it was at the Thomas house.” Two houses ago. “I know where it was next door.” One house ago. “Did we get rid of it?” Who the hell knows? “I just can’t picture where it would be in this house.” Uh huh, maybe because it’s not here. “We did get rid of it.” In times like these, I wish my grandparents were alive so I could say, “I’m sorry. I just didn’t get it.”
This is how I end up looking at our stuff trying to see into the future. Are we crazy old women now? Or is it a bit further down the road? What are the warning signs? Did we pass them? Is it too late to reel in this collection of odds and ends? Or is this just what inheritance looks like?
Sorry, Alex. We did our best.
Joceile
8.15.21
[Picture of the buffet and it’s collections. Is there no hope?]
