The things we leave behind...

For the past six months now, I have systematically been organizing, reducing, donating, and recycling what I could.  The few who really know me, who have been in my life for the long haul, such as Bettina, I think, would be shocked at how much less stuff I have now.  Repeatedly, here, I have said how much I savor everything having a place and everything being in its place, savor knowing where everything is.

Perhaps this is because I have been letting go of things I have kept for far too long.
Perhaps this is because so much should have been left behind long ago.
Perhaps this is because there is so little of what I once knew that I still know.

Perhaps.

I have been ruthless, at times, in what I have shed from my life.  Once I discovered The Mustard Seed, the non-profit that outfits homeless folk moving back into homes, I re-visited the first, second, and even third rounds of culling to see just what else I could pass onto others.  I have no children.  I have no one who will want the things I hold dear when I am gone.  At least the practical things that I am not currently using could be used now by those who would want them, those who need them.

I have also kept things that no one else would.

Of late, some of those decisions have been vindicated.  When I moved into my first home after graduating with my doctorate, I found a rather old lamp shade holder with a finial that is made to slip over a bulb left behind in a drawer. I kept it.  In Lowes the other week, I found an old-fashioned glass shade, more of a flat, square saucer, and was able to use the holder to add a shade to the bare bulb on the back porch.  The result pleases me and truly adds a wee bit of value to the home.

I have been holding on to a roll of stitch witchery for at least two decades.  It is in something else that I have kept: my grandmother's sewing kit.  The kit is filled with old notions no one would ever use and a collection of odd assortments.  The lid had broken off years ago, a satin covered piece of pasteboard, and I sewed it back on for my grandmother when I was just a little girl.  Long, crooked, bright blue stitches against the crimson satin.  My contribution to the box was three things--the first two I am sure are from the home economics class I took in the eighth grade: the box of pins we were required to purchase and the stitch removal pick.  Also in there is a roll of stitch witchery that is either from the same class or my freshman year in college.   

I used the pins to attach the curtains in the basement to the rods, because I do not know how to sew pockets for the rods.  Saturday, I used the stitch witchery to shorten the shower curtain liners. The woman who had the house for just 9 months, the one I call the Flipper, made several poor choices, cheap choices.  She replaced the plumbing fixture and curtain holder for the antique skirted tub with one that has a ring too small for the tub with an odd sized horrible shower head, then hung it improperly.  All this time, I had been battling the curtains in the showers.  I had to be careful not to step on them.  I had to fight water filling up the tub because they would block the drain.  And I had to wash them all the time because the bottom would be sitting in dirty water.  I cut off a swath of material, cut open the pouch holding the plastic weight in the hem, wrapped the edge of the liner around the weight, and then re-hemmed them with the stitch witchery.  My last two showers have been rather gloriously free of trouble.

I have also kept the left overs from construction and home improvement projects.  Always when I do installations, there seems to be left over bits and pieces.  I will also take apart that which is being replaced and harvest useful pieces if I cannot donate the item. While the electrician was working on wiring for the living space in the basement, I took the time to organize those left over bits that had been accumulating for a while.  These are the five organizers I use for my bits.  Looking at them is really looking at the story of my life, my adult life, the life I have lived since I was eighteen.  I could sit here and write stories about the things in there.  But really you would not wish to know them.  And the archive this is for me is not really about those stories.  That the photo is here is enough.  And, I think, I shall always remember the GREEN screws.  While Ben was working, four separate times he needed something and I had a bit that worked out.  So, while most would not have kept these things, I did.  And it was good for me to do so.

One last category I will mention is clothing.  Reducing my wardrobe has been the most difficult of tasks.  Recently, I finally brought myself to do a first culling.  The results were not all that impressive.  I doubt anyone would notice.  Though, I did include 3 suits, 5 jackets, 8 blouses, and a dress. I want the dress.  I suppose that is why I have yet to manage to get to the donation center.  It is a linen replica of a vintage dress that I wore to my Master's graduation.

Since I lost 92 pounds that I will most likely never be able to gain again, thanks to dysautonomia and my wretched innards issues, I cannot wear the majority of my clothing.  That which I do is mostly sweats.  The regular clothing I wear, other than the skirts I bought last fall to go with my sweater zippered, hooded tops, is all ridiculously large, but will not fall off my body.  Only, I have never been one to just go out and buy clothing.  Mine is a very non-economical wardrobe built up over my professional career.  Silk is a favorite fabric of mine.  I will never be able to replace this wardrobe with like items or variety.  Not having been unemployed now for 17 months.  Not with disability being my likely future.  SIGH.

A few things I kept have come back into season for me, things from before the prednizone weight gain.  One of them is straight out of the prairie days...a blue jean overall jumper dress that is ankle length.  In my culling, I discovered that not only can I wear it again, but it is even a tad too big.  The dress, near as I can remember, is a minimum of 15 years old.  I suspect 20.  I believe it was a post-missionary-in-Africa purchase, since most of my clothing burned in a fire there (a story for another day).  I also have bike shorts that I wear most days that I started wearing when I was 16.  In another year, they will be 30 years old.

I am not one to leave things behind.

I would like to think that is because they all mean something to me.  Truly, Kashi's first collar does.  I have it hanging on my bedroom door, along with Amos'.  Seriously, if you visit me, you would look at the collar and my fluffy white beast and disbelieve it was ever his.  But it was.  I remember not his beginning days with me, sadly, even though they were just 14 months ago.  But at least I have the collar.

I am beginning to suspect, however, the things I have that others would have left behind are a silent act of defiance...or desperate cry...against the...disposableness...of my life.

My dresser was my grandmother's. On it are two things she always had there: a glass jar that was her mother's and a pin cushion I "bought" her in Colorado, back when I was but a little, little girl.  She put her hat pins in it.  I used to have her hat boxes.  I used to have her hats.  I do not know when or how I lost them, but I have the pins and that ugly ceramic teapot pin cushion.  In a way, I should leave it behind.  My grandparents were drunks.  They were violent drunks.  Even though this was known in our family, it was a time when children are left with the grandparents.  So, the few memories I do hold of her are not pleasant.  At all.  Though I could tell you glorious things about her.  For one, hands down, no one could cook like her.  But she was a drunk.  A violent drunk.  And the alcohol and violence is something that has had a profound impact on my life...one I am only just beginning to realize.

Maybe the pin cushion should go.  Perhaps it is merely a tangible reminder of all the pretending we did in our family.  All the ignoring.  All the covering up.  Surely I should let go of such a thing.  But I have not.  I am not sure I could.  At least, not at this time.

Truly, I have begun to leave behind the things I should have done so long ago.
Truly, I have begun to gather up the things I never should have left behind.
Truly, there is much still to leave.
Much still to gather.

In all the heartache, in all the chaos, in all the uncertainty, there is a part of me that is stilled when something I have chosen to keep finds a place in the new life that I am building, even as my life seems to be fading away.  I do not know if that is good or not. I do not know if it is healthy or not.  My other grandmother was a class 5 hoarder.  This is something I only recently have begin to process, to understand the impact on her life, on my mother, on all of us.  The mental illness behind it that went untreated her entire life.  The chaos my mother lived in, lived with, ignored, and then ultimately had to face because no one else would.

From her house, I have a few pieces, in particular a set of antique wooden boxes that each have tops intricately decorated with inlaid wood...birds.  She liked birds, animals.  She would have loved Amos.  She did not like me.  I am not sure why.  The boxes are beautiful, achingly so for someone who loves antiques and appreciates true artisan craftsmanship.  But they were not given to me in love by her.  They were rescued from the horrendous filth of her home, representative more of what was lost, what was wasted, in her life.

And they are from a woman who treated her own children, at times, as if they were disposable.
A lesson I learned well.
A lesson I wish I knew not.
A lesson I am only now beginning to understand.

Part of the wounds I bear now are from those who treated my life as if it were disposable.  Part of the wounds I battle are from those who treat faith as if it is disposable...at least parts of it.  Those who pick and choose what they wish to believe of the bible.  Even those who pick and choose what they wish to believe of the Lutheran Confession, though I know they would deny such a claim.  [Funny, though, that the most oft seem to choose from the Law rather than from the Gospel.  Oh, the depths of the corruption of sin in our human nature!]  Part of the wounds that fell me still are from those who treat parts of the body of Christ as disposable, who pick and choose who worthy of fellowship and who is not.

For far too long I have let not the blood of Christ define me.  For far too long I have listened to those who said who I was.  Some of them would speak Gospel bits, but then destroy them, make them moot, with the Law.  In so many evangelical songs about God, the pronouns believers use to talk of praise and worship are first person (I, me, we).  In the Lutheran world, so many of the pronouns believers use to talk of faith are second person (you, your).  Really, the pronouns I need in my life are third-person, specifically third person, singular, masculine.

Not me, but He. Not mine, but His.
Not you, but He.  Not yours, but His.
Therein lies the truth I need to hear, the healing I crave.

God. He. His.
Jesus. He. His.
Holy Spirit. He. His.

I am a sinner.  He saved me.
I am full of doubt.  He gives me faith.
I steer my life with a selfish rudder.  He moves me to care and help others.


In all the organizing, reducing, and recycling...in all the keeping and the letting go...I want to organize the thoughts, to keep the things that help me see, to know, what is important:

God. He. His.
Jesus. He. His.
Holy Spirit. He. His.





I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!