Thursdays with Lesley

No, this won't be as depressing as Tuesdays with Morrie, I promise.  If you haven't read Tuesdays with Morrie, I do recommend it, but don't read it on an airplane, without Kleenex, on your way to a meeting where people are going to wonder why your eyes look like that.  I'm just saying.

Lesley and I have been taking turns going to each others houses to help sift through the skeletons in the closet. Or, in the words of George Carlin, "Did you ever notice how other peoples' stuff is crap and your crap is stuff?"  It is so much easier to tell someone else to throw something out than it is to tell yourself.

In yesterday's lot were several wedding presents.  This is treacherous emotional ground because it is hard to separate the giver from the gift.  There were gifts that were still sealed in the original packaging.  This would lead you to believe that this item had never been used.  And you would be correct.  No, I will never use it. No, I don't like it. No, I don't want to display it. No, I can't possibly get rid of it.  The shame of it all? There was not one argument or excuse Lesley used that I haven't used myself.

In fairness to Lesley, at least hers were in a cabinet.  I have plenty of my unresolved emotional dilemmas on full display in all their dust collecting glory.  Yes, the horse collection. Over a hundred of them, ranging from the the first one I got at age three, missing its tail, all the way to the newest half dozen, gotten sadly when that "3" was moved to the tens place of my age. Those are untouched, still in the original boxes.

While there are plenty of them that I couldn't dream of parting with, such as the one I got at the Calgary Stampede in 1974, or the one my grandparents let me pick out at the toy store when I stayed with them the summer  before my grandfather passed away.  However, there are others, especially those I got when I was older, to which I have no huge emotional attachment.  Like the ones still sealed in the boxes.  They remind me of Stinky Pete in Toy Story II as they have never been played with-- ever-- and likely never will.  But they were a gift. They might be worth something someday. I don't know how to go about selling them. They aren't hurting anything.

But aren't they?  I wondered about that as Lesley and I found a new spot to store the beautiful silverware she got from her grandmothers.  No, that plural isn't accidental.  Two grandmothers, two sets.  By her own admission she won't ever use it, but she'd never get rid of it.  And I understand that as someone with a whole china cabinet full of my great-grandmother's china that I'm afraid to use but could never get rid of.  I even have a set of silverware that was given to me as a gift that I have, honestly, never particularly cared for, yet I keep it.  At least she likes the stuff she is keeping that she isn't going to use.

What happens to the silverware, the china, the horses, and the unopened wedding gifts when the decisions are no longer up to us?  Will they be unceremoniously tossed in the give away bin because our children have no connection to them? Or with they also feel obligated to drag them around all their lives, either disliking them, afraid to use them, or both?  If they are going to be worth something someday, when is someday?

Is it disrespectful to part with them?  I am certainly not the one to decide that.  I gave away a pie cloth that belonged to my mother's mother, a woman I met briefly exactly twice in my life.  My mother gave it to me because the odds of her making pie crust were slim.  It was an awkward size, too big to fit in any drawer. Over the years I moved it to a dozen different places, where it continued to be in the way, collect dog hair and dust, and go unused.  The Trifecta!  When someone was looking for one, I gave it to her.  She was beyond thrilled and I know it has gotten used and loved.  Yet I still have remorse over giving it away, now several years ago.  Why, somehow, do I believe that keeping it to get inevitably ruined would be a better tribute to the memory of someone I barely knew, albeit still my grandmother, than to give it to someone who would use it and appreciate it the way she did herself?

Several times yesterday, Lesley also used the phrase "for now." This, I know, is a fatal phrase.  It means that whatever it is is going to be shoved back into the box/drawer/closet it came out of because you just don't want to deal with it right now. In six months, twelve months, twelve years you will still be pulling that thing out and struggling with what to do with it.  If you are lucky, you will have somehow miraculously forgotten why it was so important and be able to give it away without regret.  Unfortunately, the more likely scenario is that the memory connected to it will have intensified as there was just some anniversary or the giver passed on. Now you really can't bear to part with it, so back in the box/drawer/closet it goes.  For someone else to deal with.

For women of Lesley's and my age, that someone else will be us, either in the near or distant future.  Barring any aberration in the order of things, our parents will pass on before us and we will be going through their boxes/drawers/closets and deciding what we can chuck with impunity and what we will drag along with us like Marley's chains, caused not by greed, but by sentiment and indecisiveness.

My grandmother (my father's mother) was one of the least sentimental people I've known.  When she had her condo, she displayed the items that made her happy, even if the rest of us might have thought them silly, or even cheap looking.  When she downsized to assisted living and we cleaned out her condo, we found amazingly beautiful glasses in the cabinet over the refrigerator, where things go you never plan on using ever again.  She said they were from her wedding but that she never cared for them.  Yet she kept them for almost 70 years.

When she passed away, we had the task of sorting through her personal belongings.  As my father was an only child and my grandmother was the last of her siblings to pass on, there wasn't any squabbling over who got what.  As we got to the tailings, mostly costume jewelry, scarves and the like, we put it all out on the table and took what we wanted.  After that, there was still more on the table, but we didn't just scoop it up and get rid of it.  We just couldn't.  Why she had kept these particular things we didn't know.  Did this 1970s style chain belt have some special meaning?  Did that orange necklace come from a dear friend?  So out of guilt we each took more than we wanted and stored it away.  For our children to sort through one day.

Back to Thursday.  Lesley and I got through the cupboard and I saw some of her beautiful and special items. We found places for them in her gorgeous new kitchen where hopefully we have made it so she can easily access those she would like to use.  Now my struggle is to figure out what we are going to sort through at my house next week.  Can I face the horse decision? What about my closet, including items such as the western boots I haven't had on in over twenty years and couldn't get my foot in if the house was on fire?  Perhaps the magazine conundrum-- haven't been read but I want to read, or were read and have dog eared corners of things I wanted to go back to even though I don't know what anymore.  If we all have our Waterloo, books and magazines might well be mine.

On a completely unrelated note, today was not my best day ever. Wednesday I felt great, within striking distance of normal. Yesterday I felt tired, but at least useful.  Today I feel ick.  There was little sleep last night. First there was cat wrestling. Second there was I can't breathe through my mouth for some reason. That will set you to panicking.  Just when I was about to wake Kelly up, I caught my breath.  When I finally managed to go back to sleep, I had a spectacular nightmare starring my ex-husband. Nice.  This morning, I had another round of being unable to breathe through my mouth.  Kelly looked in my mouth and said that my flongue and throat we so swollen that there was just not room for air to get through.  Ice pack and Motrin made it tolerable.  Physical therapy helped a lot.  She felt like I might have a little bug as she said my lymph nodes in my chest were in an uproar, too.  Just what I need, something else for my limited lymph nodes to work on.

Today is shaping up to be a lie around and feel like crap day.  I'm not excited by that prospect, but at least Karissa doesn't have anything today.  I'm more than a little nervous about going to a conference all day tomorrow feeling less than great and not driving myself so I have to stay the whole day or backing out at the last minute. Speaking of emotional minefields...

Until tomorrow, maybe.