Of Oaken Obstacles and Naugahyde Albatrosses

I spent the better part of the morning going through my closet. Little remains in there now but a few tops and a couple of skirts I hope someday to be able to fit back into. I've had those same hopes for fifteen years, so I doubt they'll come true anytime soon, so those items will join their companions tomorrow in the stack of donations. We shall part ways amicably, me and my size fives. They're resting in a rather goodly stack of boxes, waiting for the truck to come whisk them to wherever they're needed.

As I sorted, I got to thinking about the items I was preparing to donate. Each has its bit of history attached, and as I fingered the lace on the edge of a formerly favorite blouse, I replayed the lunch hour trip to Bullock's to acquire it, back in the early 70s. Terrible to think that I still have such items in my possession. The fashion police would arrest me on sight, I'm sure, if they knew that these wardrobe staples have followed me around the country for almost thirty years. Yet they're still in perfectly serviceable condition, barely worn, old friends.

I stopped and looked around, at my house full of stuff. Stuff. Acquisitions. Possessions. There's the armoire that my late husband and I bought in 1972 and hauled home in the back of the Corvair convertible. It holds down a piece of the floor, and masks a stack of sweaters and a few drawers full of logo t-shirts that used to fit back when I was a tiny thing (which I haven't been for nearly 15 years). Nothing in there has the slightest bit of purpose to it, with the exception of a Icelandic wool sweater that someone brought as a gift when they returned from a long trip in Keflavik. The armoire has been missing the left door pull for about 22 years. You knock it firmly on its face and the door will pop open. I wouldn't miss it nor its contents.

There's that monstrosity of an oak dining room table that he insisted we must have when we moved to this house back in '85. It expands to seat about 300, and as I recall, we had some delivery difficulties when it arrived from the store. Four chairs showed up; the other four were on the bill of lading but did not exist. I remember it took about four months for the other four chairs to materialize from whatever Bermuda Triangle they vanished into from the back of the local delivery truck. Stuff. Possessions. Amiable companions that have slowly gathered into position over the course of many years, but very little is significant.

The table holds up a stack of folded sheets, two boxes of interesting spare parts which have shown up in the carpet over the past 15 years, two or three butter dishes full of orphaned bolts and rubber bands, a pillow that one of the cats adopted as her very own, handy for surveillance of the back yard. The table could go - all except for the cat.

The more I looked around, the more I realized that the value of all the items that clutter the place, hold down the carpet and act as repositories for other stuff, is not in their presence, but in their memories. I'd miss my computer, my recliner, my television - each of those three band together to form the backbone of much of my existence. Those I would miss. I would miss my desk as well, and the hundreds and hundreds of books on the steel shelves that have acted as temporary bookcases for the past 21 years. But I've read most of the books, and the ones I haven't read, I probably won't. They should go to a library anyway, where they can fill a mind instead of acting as efficient dust magnets.

I'd miss my microwave, which has been in the family since 1978 and still works perfectly except when it decides to shoot sparks into the spaghetti sauce. Note: never microwave FIMO modeling clay. Nothing good will come of the results.

I wandered through the house rather aimlessly, envisioning these items missing, utterly destroyed, flooded, entirely gone. Then I destroyed the house around them - mentally.

No matter what mental exercise I performed - no matter how hard I worked to discount the physical presence of these possessions which have accumulated over my lifetime - no matter how hard I tried to envision life without these oaken obstacles and naugahyde albatrosses trailing after me, I could not duplicate one single minute of the sense of loss that must engulf every single family, every single person who has had a home ripped out from beneath their feet. These things - these possessions - this stuff - these form a framework upon which life is woven. To have that demolished, to have that so forcibly removed, is incomprehensible until it happens to you.

Tomorrow when the truck arrives to pick up the boxes, I'll probably have ten times the number of boxes ready to go. It will never ever be enough.