Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
A fine mess
Back in the day I remember watching Laurel and Hardy on our small black and white TV. Invariably, Laurel would get them in some kind of funny trouble and Hardy would say his line, “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into!”.
Well, our house for the moment is quite the fine mess. Yesterday, Jan started emptying a couple of boxes of stuff we packed to prepare for the flooring guys. I asked her not to be in a big hurry to empty all the boxes. My point is that this is an excellent opportunity to purge – such an ugly word – what we no longer need. Like the three bags of clothes that sat in my closet for several years. We know someone who will take the clothes and put them to good use, so they are lined up by the front door, ready to go.
But there is so much more. My project today is to go through the pantry and the pantry box and make some sense out of the contents. It’s not that big a space, our pantry, but the floor held enough to fill a medium size box with God knows what. Probably there is stuff that belonged to Minnie Dog that Mollie Dog does not need – an old pill box with Minnie’s pills, and various dog snacks that are no doubt way out of date, for example.
Then I noticed that Jan unpacked the box of delicate items that are displayed in our book cases. Those things represent two lifetimes of memories. Soap stone carvings that Rose brought from Africa that depict mother and children are among my favorites. There is a copper “Jangada”, a small replica of a simple wooden sailboat that Brazilian fishermen use to travel out to sea. I love a small Waterford clock that Rose and Mary got in honor of our commitment ceremony in 2006. Jan has some wooden dolls that hold incense that, when it is lit, the smoke comes out of their pipes. I don’t know where those are from.
On my desk sits a cloth doll that Jackie brought back from one of her trips to Africa. We also have a small lion made entirely of tiny beads – also from Africa, given to us by our Unity minister from Unity of Naples after she went on safari.
That’s the thing about belongings. They hold deep memories for the owners. They each have a story about how they were made, what they represent, how they came to travel from one continent to another. They are items acquired because someone else thought of us and wanted to bring us a gift home from their travels. Or, they are part of our personal histories – like the boat from Brazil, obtained when I lived in that huge and fascinating country as a teenager.
When we are no longer of this earth, our children will have to decide what to do with the curios. Most of them have no inherent value to the people who have to dismantle a life. But, having to decide what to keep is sometimes agonizing. I know, having emptied my mother’s apartment after she died. She had belongings from Mexico, Brazil, India, and Europe that showcased her extensive overseas life. Some of those things are still with me. But my children never knew their grandmother. And, both of them live in neat houses with very small accumulations of “stuff” like what they will find here. So, the sentimental value that we put on each item will not necessarily pass on to Jackie and Ted. Not to mention that sentimental value is the extent of what each thing is worth, so selling them is not really an option either.
All of this begs the question of what to do with each bauble that comes out of a box. I’ll probably put them all back on the shelves, remembering each person who gifted us, and remembering the stories that came with them. That old saying, “You can’t take it with you…”, will definitely be on my mind. And as cold as it feels to say this, when I’m gone it won’t be my problem.