Shoveling Out
February 7th, 2006
Mothering
When the new year rolled around I got this burning urge to get rid of all my stuff. Maybe, I thought, I could actually become the person I had resolved to be if I scrapped my battle-scarred, stained environment and started over. Clothes. Furniture. Especially, the disgusting flooring in my house. It was all I could do to keep myself from grabbing a crowbar and ripping at the dirty carpet and worn parquet. Out! Out!
Given the fact that we have no money for new flooring, I abstained. But I still kept looking around, imagining shiny hardwood, new paint, and clean couches. I decided to focus my fanatical fantasizing elsewhere.
The first victim: toys. It’s taken me close to ten years, but I’m finally finished with the tyranny of too many toys. It takes me two entire days each week to put everything where it belongs, and it takes the kids about two minutes to dump it all out again. They play happily for an hour or two, and then we spend the rest of the week stepping on or over things until it’s time to clean again. I’m a slow learner. I just don’t have the self-discipline to take care of lots of things–let alone teach my kids to do the same.
So…. Out! Out! Ninety percent of the stuff got boxed up and stacked in the garage. I know, I know, but we have no money for child therapy either. At least they know their piles of stuff are tucked safely away (yet safely out of their reach) on the dusty shelves, somewhere out there. Of course, they still manage to spread that last ten percent into every corner of the house, but my sense of control has increased 900 percent. At least.
Aaaaah.
Next victim: clothes. I ripped through my closet with no mercy. Every time I grabbed something off its hanger, I felt like I lost 2 pounds. If only actual weight loss were this simple, and enjoyable.
Next, Reed hauled 30 boxes of kids’ clothes into our living room for me to sort through. Had it not been for my manic mindset, this task would have reduced me to stubble. Visual overload! Decision overload! But the timing was perfect. I regarded the stacks with a conquering eye, and dug in with relish.
The first box was a pile of girl baby clothes.
No, I told myself. Don’t waffle. It’s time to move on, time to give this to someone who can use it. This daughter who has lived in my mind for years will likely never materialize–and if she ever does, it will be an occasion that calls for brand new baby clothes. Take a deep breath, and put it all in the “give” pile. Out! Out!
So, after a brief pause, I steamrolled ahead. The give pile grew, and grew. A dozen boxes of girl clothes, a half dozen of boy clothes. Thomas couldn’t possibly need all this stuff. There are half-naked children who do need it. Today.
But my eyes kept straying back to those damn little dresses and pink sleepers. I kept picking them up, then putting them back down, again and again.
Finally, I started another pile.
In went all the handmade things from my mother-in-law. In went the dresses my girls have worn in their childhood photographs. In went the “Daddy’s Little Girl” sleeper. I stowed this relatively small pile in a plastic tub under Thomas’s crib.
Aaaah.
Whether Mystery Girl ever shows up or not, I have my most prized mementos tucked safely away. And even better–I have years and years of little-girl memories tucked away too, somewhere in that cavernous internal garage of mine. True, I can’t always reach them, but someday, I trust I will be privileged to take every box off those dusty shelves, open them, and savor the contents, again and again.
That’s part of heaven’s allure for me: power over time. The merging of past, present, and future into one eternal now. Finally, the ability to grasp and hold “the fugitive moment which refuses to stay.”
All while sitting on a clean couch, in a room with fresh paint and shiny hardwood floors.
