Okay, y' made me mad. But I'm calmer now and I'd like to offer another perspective....
My mom was born in 1920 and spent her early years being shoved off on one relative after another, all her worldly goods crammed into one small suitcase. She spent the 40's newlywed and living in a rented room while my dad served in the Navy. She spent the next 30 years in base housing, moving practically every year. I always understood that she was such a pack rat because of all those hard times when all she had fit into 1 or 2 suitcases.
When my dad finally retired, they bought a 50' mobile home and spent the last 20 or so years of their lives in the same tiny mobile home park. Eventually her health deteriorated to the point that even she knew the nursing home was her last home.
Getting ready to move there, she and I spent 2 long weeks packing and throwing away the trash packed into every corner of that house. And there were tons of it! Every time I poked into a new corner I found MORE!
And sitting in her new wheelchair in the middle of her living room, she went through every box and every bag that I dragged out. For her they were treasured memories. Some photos were so old she couldn't even remember who the people were. But others she named off like she'd just seen them yesterday. Told me all their stories--who they'd married, about their kids, where they were buried. She remembered the war years and all the good mixed into those hard times. Telling me, she laughed and cried and laughed some more.
There was this one nasty old box, I remember, with crumpled bits of moldy paper. This smeary bit was the Mother's Day card my sister made in 2nd grade, and that one was my Halloween card from kindergarten. That red thing was my hand print. The funny head was my sister's self-portrait. She had all the school projects and all the old report cards, so moldy you couldn't read them anymore, but SHE remembered what they said.
She had all my dad's old, musty letters written to her while he was at sea, and she read them each again, and cried.
As I watched, she relived her whole life in those nasty, musty, moldy old boxes. And then she quietly stuffed them into the plastic bags and watched me haul them out for the trash collectors.
My mom and I had never been close until that week, but after it was over somehow I no longer felt irritated by all her fussy, old-fashioned ways. Even though she only stayed a few months in the nursing home before she, too, was gone, in those few months we were closer than we had ever been before.
So please do remember that sometimes it only LOOKS like junk until you see it through someone else's memories.
Hawke
