Behind a very beautiful corrugated wall of perforated aluminum in my downstairs family/entertainment room are shelves and shelves of ‘stuff.’ Blankets and books. Assorted theatrical lighting accumulated from my husband’s days as an interior designer. Suitcases and a toolbox or two. A classic (nonworking) IBM Selectric typewriter, a vintage electric Smith-Corona, and possibly the nearest and dearest to my heart, my very first portable Olympia.
Let’s not forget the boxes filled with what we generously call memorabilia. My wedding gown and hat, not to mention the congratulatory cards filled with loving thoughts that date back to 1984. Invitations and leftover party favors from the day my daughter became a Bat Mitzvah (more than ten years ago). Trinkets and toys and dolls – Barbies/American Girls/My Little Ponies. Sundry ribbons and buttons and any little ‘truc’ to remind us of my daughter’s extracurricular activities and her cherished summers at camp in Maine. Her artwork and the pieces she wrote for (high school) classes that moved her and (college) applications that would take her to places she longed to go.
My very own personal box of old photographs, letters, and postcards (even one I sent to myself on my first trip to Florence, just for the fun of it). Birthday cards from ‘marker’ years. My training log for the NYC Marathon, 1981.
Magazines that bear the mark of collectors’ items (go ahead, laugh): The 40th anniversary issue of Esquire, 5th anniversary issue of Ms. Magazine, 75th anniversary issue (plus more than a few others) of the New Yorker, literary journals I’ve cherished. Favorite issues of National Geographic. Just opening any of them reminds me of something long gone, the vivid glossy photographs that fired my imagination and longing to travel, a quaint reminder that tangible had a different meaning in pre-1024×768 resolution days.
A box of papers and maps that belonged to my father-in-law, including the log book from his days as a WWII navigator. An old camera of my father’s, a relic from his war days, along with the (yes) snapshots of him and his buddies stationed in North Africa and Italy.
Blankets and pillows and lamps, oh my!
***
Last weekend finds me in the attic of a dear friend’s house, a break from the table between dinner and coffee. If size is a factor, this attic can easily handle its accumulation. Except for one thing. The person who knows this attic best, the woman whose house it is, wants it cleared of excess. She wants this attic to speak to/for what matters. This beautiful house, home in every rich sense of the word to the children who grew up here, is in a state of flux. The daughter is months away from becoming a mother herself. The question, implied here, is one I think about a great deal: once the children are gone, what does ‘home’ retain? An essence, intangible as it is, that speaks to a time and place imprinted in our being.
There’s a trundle bed lying on its side in the attic, dislocated from the son’s room, now elegantly turned into a guest room. It is the ten-by-twelve space it always was. Only now there is an elegant queen-size bed to replace the trundle bed, and some of the furniture has been removed. Once again my husband does his design/decorating magic.
Of all the things in the attic – the chairs and conference table from her husband’s office, the boxes and boxes of wedding gifts her daughter and son-in-law cannot (yet) make use of in their NYC apartment, the things from her own life she has deemed ‘save-worthy’ – it is the bed that appears to bother her least. Maybe her daughter can make use of it one day, she thinks. Only her daughter has clearly said she doesn’t want it.
I suggest she get rid of the bed.
The beauty of an attic is what the very word suggests: what we put aside into those pockets we can’t let go of. And why should we? Everything we accumulate becomes a part of who we are. Until one day, when we threaten to drown in the very accumulation. Perhaps the ‘value’ my friend places on the bed has as much to do with the sentimental/emotional space it occupies as its actual worth. Why not give it away, perhaps to a family recovering from the deluge only months ago that cost it its home, beds, and more? A new bed will find its way to her grandchild, when the time comes. And the things she would like her family members to divest will eventually find their way out of the attic.
Letting go does not come easily for most people I know, myself included. Then there’s simple sentiment, the desire to pass along things that connect us generation-to-generation. How do we reshape the very places we call home – in a way that suits what they now are and still retains the essence of what they once were?
Back to my own little storage corner, with the empty boxes my husband makes available and I start to fill, my own sense of not wanting to wait until leisurely choice becomes necessity. We’re so good at getting rid of things when have to. I do a pretty good job (or so I think). Nobody wants used stuffed animals anymore, so into the ‘discard’ box they go. Books, children’s games I can donate to the local thrift shop go into another box, along with a wallet I stopped using years ago, milky with dust from sitting on a shelf. I fill the box, give it to my husband. Before he closes it up, he pulls out the wallet. “You can’t give this away,” he says. It’s a brown leather wallet (Prada), a little worn but usable, a gift from my brother-in-law for a marker birthday, my 50th. Someone else will enjoy using it, I say. He agrees, even if he has a different someone else in mind. He cleans up the wallet, places it into a box of its own. Sends it off to my daughter.
