The STUFF of Life

I may have grown up in Silver Lake, but I no longer live there.  I have moved many times from the house on Angus Street.  And, in a year, I will be moving again.  This leads to the question:  What do I do with the STUFF of life?

I am not a pack rat and purge belongings regularly.  This was a necessity in the days when I could carry everything I owned from one country to another, and continued when everything I owned would fit in the trunk of a used Ford Maverick. Those days have gone.  Still,  Goodwill and Salvation Army are not unfamiliar with my drop offs.

BUT, there are some items that have come into my possession that have me wondering about the ethics of their final disposition.  The item that has me the most conflicted is the American flag that draped the casket of my mother’s first husband.  He died of polio during World War Two, and my mother saved the flag until her own death.  She and my father would occasionally hang it on the Fourth of July and then stow the neatly folded triangle in a plastic case at the top of a hall closet.  When my mother and father had both passed away, the flag remained. My sister didn’t want it, and nor did I, but I took it.  I really don’t want to take it on my next move and I don’t know what to do with it.

Another item that has me in a quandary is a rather unattractive needlepoint pillow that my mother made from a kit.  Once again, neither my sister nor I wanted it.  To ensure that the pillow made its way out of her life and into mine, my sister sneaked it into my luggage.  It now lives in my basement.   Perhaps I should sneak it back to my sister’s house some day.

My husband’s father’s linen jacket sits in our office closet.  My husband has never worn it and never will.  It serves only as a memory of his father.  I have my aunt’s Hong Kong made black and gold embroidered dress and jacket that will never fit me.   And there’s the blouse that a well meaning friend gave me, the glass lobster brought back from a European trip by another friend and the beaded purse that was a gift from a visitor from China.  None of these things are items I wish to take to my new home.  But each has its clutches into memories and emotions.

What about the “challenged” clay art made by my four-year son, or the candles given to me by my mother that I’ve never put a match to?  There’s the rather ugly gold-tone watch that my husband gave me as a wedding present because the name of the brand was “Corvette” and he’d heard me talking about Chevy Corvettes every time DALLAS would air on our tiny black and white television in Edinburgh.  No one would want these things…and I don’t either.  But I can’t quite part with them.

There’s the cookie cutter in the shape of my two year old’s hand, the masks given me by well meaning people who knew I collect masks, but not which kind, and the cups and saucers from some distant relative of my husband that someone somewhere might like to display on a wall.    Just not me.   What about all the high school senior portraits with heartfelt messages that I have acquired over the years as a teacher?  Do I want to become one of those people who bring out a box of mementos every year to relive my life?   No, not yet. 

A few months ago I cleaned out the filing cabinets and got rid of five trash bags of letters of recommendations, school transcripts, contracts and virtually anything work related.  No need for it now.  If I ever decide to go back to work in education they’d be damned lucky to have me and a letter from someone who is probably dead isn’t going to help.

Then there’s the holiday STUFF:  the ornaments that are ugly and the felt stockings made by a deaf great-aunt in the 1950’s.

And lastly, there are the clothes of the babes.  I am 62 and still have a yellow hand-knitted infant jacket that someone made for me.  I have two sweet sweaters from St. Stephen’s Street in Edinburgh that I bought for my son.  On has spit-up stains and the other has moth holes.  

This is the STUFF of my life.  It will eventually go.   But how long that will take, I do not know.