Tag: purging

do family collections preserve our past or weigh down our future? 

I recently helped my best girlfriend pack up her three-bedroom house (with a full basement) in preparation for her family’s move to a one-bedroom condo. She and her husband have been married for 25 years and have two daughters – one 18 and headed to college and one 8 and headed to third grade. Among the four of them, they have accumulated… well, a lot. What would be sold, stored, tossed, or moved? 

As I bubble-wrapped collection after impressive collection of their family treasures – from National Park plates and Disney figurines, to miniature spoons and state quarters – I found myself marveling at the depth of these memories they had collected through the years. But then I felt a certain sadness about them being boxed up out of sight and out of mind, shuffled from one house to the next. My sadness then shifted to something I can only describe as overwhelm, thinking about the weight of it all, the literal and figurative heaviness of these objects. The physical weight of each box, the resources spent to acquire them, the space required to store them, and the heart space filled with obligation to hold on to them for one day when. (“One day when I have more walls…” “One day when the girls are grown and have children of their own…”).

Growing up, my mom assigned everything in our house (and I mean every. thing.) immense sentimental value. (“This bowl / this plant / this tablecloth was a wedding gift from your great grandmother / from my cousin / from my first boss. When your daddy and I are dead and gone, please don’t put it in a yard sale.”). While I used to get annoyed with her constant reminders of which items came from whom, I now realize that my mother doesn’t have generations of stories and heirlooms passed down to her through the thick branches of a centuries-old family tree. Mom was adopted and, until just recently in her late 60s, she knew very little about her birth family. Perhaps the constant inventorying is her roundabout way of creating a rich family history in a single generation’s time. Perhaps my sister’s four beautiful children are her own gifts in service to my mom’s quest. Maybe they are just both doing what they can to give our family tree some extra branches. 

While I admire their intent (and adore my nieces and nephew), I’m just not wired for collecting. A couple of times a year, I cull my closets and drawers, creating piles to toss out, donate, or organize. I don’t buy souvenirs or collect coffee cups. I won’t allow myself to feel obligated to or weighed down by things. I actually get quite anxious if I find myself believing that a story or memory is inextricably linked to an object. If I find myself believing that without the thing the memory will cease to be, I can start to feel really squirrelly and jump into a tidying, purging frenzy. Just this weekend, I downsized four large storage bins my mom had given me of my childhood keepsakes into two small boxes – one for early keepsakes like my nursery blanket, diaper pins, and kindergarten class photos; and one for grade school report cards and high school memories from the dance team. 

During our packing party back at her house, my friend said she didn’t recall me having any collections of my own. I had to give that some thought. What have my husband and I had collected during our 20 years of life together? Passport stamps, National Park medallions for our walking sticks, bins of hobby gear (camping, skiing, fishing, golfing, flying, scuba diving…), and books, books, and more books. While we do have to account for an entire extra room for our book collection and a garage for our hobby gear when looking at real estate, I am grateful that our collections are uniquely ours. That our library of books invite us to be still and grow our minds. That our hobby gear invites us to get up and go. And that our passport stamps are our gateway to adventure. 

So do our family collections preserve our past or weigh down our future? Maybe it’s less of a question that needs a specific answer and more of a mantra to be consulted when considering what should stay and what should go. 

further on down the road

What a difference a month makes. I feel so incredibly grateful and humbled by my new job. All the good things that I had hoped would be true about this new chapter are true, indeed. And as for the scary stuff? It’s not nearly so scary.

I am blessed to be writing again full time about subject matter that really gets my motor running. Plus, after working nearly six years in an office without a single window in a beige sea of cubicles, I am so thankful for the unobstructed view I now have to the outside world. It lends me immeasurable creative inspiration every day. Blessings abound, and I am most grateful.

So now that I’m settled in at work, my husband and I are in the midst of a transition at home. We’re both now working further south, so it only makes sense to say goodbye to our condo in the city (our first home purchase) so we can both enjoy a shorter commute. We’re also getting ready to trade in my husband’s beloved Jeep, which has been in our lives since the very beginning. Literally, since the moment we met.

When it comes to stuff, I’ve always been a purger, happy to dump or donate the old to make room for the new. Sure, certain things are here to stay, like my grandmother’s sieve or the various pieces of furniture handmade by my father-in-law. But the dried corsage from my high school prom? Not so much. (Sorry, Mom.)

But now with all this shuffle and change, I’m finding myself amid some serious blurred lines in the “stuff” department. Not so much the stuff inside our home, but the actual space that has been the scene of so much these past three years – from our Thanksgiving picnic on the floor the week we moved in, to warm sunrises breaking over the ocean, to the heartbreaking passing of our first dog, to the floppy puppy stage of our new dog, to our dear friends’ pregnancy announcement, and our own passionate nights of love and war. I sure will miss this place.

And then there’s the dear old Jeep. My husband and I were set up on a blind date, so while we were making plans over the phone on where to meet, I asked him what kind of car he drove so I would know I had the right guy. (Clearly, this was back when blind dates were truly blind, long before Facebook and preemptive pre-date creeping.)

I walked out of my dorm building, and there he was, my future husband, propped against the door of his black Jeep Wrangler. He was wearing linen pants and a maroon button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had a silver chain around his neck and leather slides on his feet, crossed at the ankle. I was instantly smitten.

The Jeep has traveled three times from Alabama to Key West and back, from Whiteman Air Force Base – a long way from the only home I had ever known – all the way to Palm Beach County. It’s seen music tech advancements, from tape deck to CD player to auxiliary cord to Bluetooth. It’s toted many fishing rods, SCUBA gear and 13 years of Christmas trees. Now here we are, 150,000 miles down the road, and it’s time to grant the old Jeep a much-deserved retirement. Thanks for all the memories.

I’m excited at the thought of a new home and that new-car smell, but it really does feel like the end of an era in some ways. It’s a good time for me to pause and remind myself that the stuff is not the sentiment. In giving the stuff away, I am not giving away the memories.

Nope, those precious treasures are mine to keep for as long as I like, and I look forward to all the new ones yet to be made further on down the road.