Cardboard Boxes

     I was at The Health Nut this morning when I received this text message from my mom:

    I was begging for someone to sell me some supplements that might alleviate even one of the perimenopause symptoms I'm currently experiencing. Seriously, any one will do. It will help me sleep all the way through the night? Sold! It will eradicate the hot flashes that turn my face as red as a tomato at random times throughout the day? I'll take it! It will help me stop wanting to breathe fire and rip someone's head off the moment they make a benignly stupid comment? I will buy five. Just point me in the right direction.

    What I ended up buying: a bottle of Black Cohosh supplements, a bar of turmeric soap, and some Thai crystal roll-on deodorant. We'll see if any of this does what it's supposed to do. Then it was back out into the hot car and Saturday traffic to call Mom back about this nightmare text.

    Here's what you need to know about both sides of my family: I come from people who do not like to get rid of anything. Borderline hoarders for generations on both sides. My dad's dad bought a house in the Marigny as a rental property, but also because it had a garage where he could store some of the things he accumulated in the 30 years he lived in New Orleans. When my mom's parents left Denver for Nebraska in the early 1990s, my brother and I spent over a month helping them unearthing everything they'd shoved down in the basement 'just in case,' tagging the things that weren't thrown away or donated, and helping with the yard sales they held.

    My dad has enough decoys to simulate several flocks of ducks and geese. Enough fishing equipment that by all accounts, our family should probably be in the business of hosting fishing expeditions. And enough tools that should I need to, I could build myself a fortress and a trebuchet to defend it. He also inherited most of the things in that garage my grandpa owned, and it all resides in the back apartment of his house in New Orleans.

    Mom has a hard time getting rid of any piece of paper she's ever come into ownership of. When I was a kid, this resulted in stacks of papers everywhere: on the hutch, in the hutch, on one half of our kitchen table, in boxes in her closet. When she moved to Nebraska in 2014, I drove to Denver to help her pack. We spent three days with me trying to get her to throw whole boxes of old papers away, while she wanted to make sure we didn't get rid of anything "she might need."

    Watching my family negotiate their possessions through time and space has made me react in the opposite way. I derive great joy from getting rid of things. Every move for me has been an opportunity to divest myself of things. Every move has also riddled me with guilt, because I still have too many things. Who will deal with all of these books when I die? Who will want my tote of knitting supplies? And why can't I seem to put a capsule wardrobe together so I only own 20 pieces of clothing and look like I know what I'm doing?

    Last month, my grandparents both moved into an assisted living facility in Iowa. It had been nearly a year since my grandma had a stroke which left her hospitalized for about a month before she returned home and then moved into an assisted living facility on her own. The move to Iowa came about because my grandpa also needs more care than can be given readily at home. Also, my aunt and uncle, who have lived next door to my grandparents for over twenty years are moving to Iowa. So it was an ideal time to get my grandparents into a facility together. My mom is also living in Iowa at the moment, while all of this gets settled.

    My mom is back in Nebraska right now, helping my aunt and uncle sort through my grandparents' things so they can put their house on the market. And there's a lot to get settled. My grandparents are notorious collectors of things. They collected antiques: Red Wing crocks, dishes, books, clocks, coins, etc. They loved yard and estate sales. They collected rocks for their rock garden. They also had a lot of hobbies: waterskiing, genealogy, photography, paper crafts. 

    So I get a pit in my stomach when I get a text like this one from my mom. My mind immediately screams, "noooooooo!" It's not that I don't value the genealogy research that my grandma did. But I'm the only one amongst my cousins and brother who has not permanently settled somewhere. B and Beanie and I are are spring-loaded in this rental with enough kitchen supplies to equip a commercial kitchen (I didn't get rid of all the things I wanted to when I moved in here). I have a stack of books I need to take to the little free library down the street. There's a bag of clothes in the back of my car that I forgot to drop off at the donation spot today. Next year, we will have to box up everything here and move it somewhere else. I will take that opportunity to get rid of some more stuff, because the thought of packing it all up again? Terrifying.

    The only thing more terrifying than my own moves are the ones I experience peripherally, like the one my mom, aunt, and uncle are going through right now. Moving is the worst. I don't even have comforting words, because when you're in the middle of it, you just want it to be over so badly, you can hardly think straight.

    That is, unless you're Loudon Wainwright III. In that case, you write this song:

    May we all find a way to find such humor in such miserable circumstances!