Two, maybe three hundred years ago, I was getting ready to buy my grandmother’s house. I invited my West Coast Friend and Other Daughter for an evening of going through the attic of a house that was bought during the Time of Great Hoarding, otherwise known as The Depression. The Thirties. You know, make do or do without? We spent a wonderful rainy blowy evening tucked up under the eaves, looking through boxes of “stuff.”
I’m not using “stuff” as a place-keeper; there is no other word for this collection. Scraps of fabric and of paper, old correspondence. Souvenirs from resorts, mostly in the form of little articulated puppets, or turtles made from shells with legs and head and tail held on loosely, so they would wiggle at the slightest movement. Pieces of cardboard wound with a few yards of thread, or string, or wire, and old pens that probably didn’t write so well to begin with. Stuff, put away for safe-keeping in a dry attic in old cigar boxes, or hat boxes, or boxes from even then long-defunct stores. Candy boxes too, the pretty ones with the satin ribbons. The rough construction was all done in fir; to this day when I smell a cut piece of the wood, it makes me feel safe and cozy. Yes, and a couple of pieces of fur, including the classic small creature biting its own tail.
So, centuries later, when I moved up here I emptied out the storage space I rented in the middle of my divorce. A lot of “things” had been put in there, boxes that would have to wait until I was a good deal more stable than I was then. And here we are, coming up on winter, and I needed to get my little red car put away for the winter so I could park outside the garage and off the streets, so we sorted through piles and boxes and big black garbage bags and tossed willy-nilly (oh, please, tell me my socks aren’t all in one of those bags that are gone!!!) and made a good deal of sense out of most of it.
One of the boxes was a tiny trove, of pictures from long ago with no names (“Is that a relative?” “Look at his ears”), calling cards with my grandfather’s name crossed off and my uncle’s name penciled in, a small jigsaw puzzle, an ashtray that maybe belonged on a smoking stand or in a car, a couple of broken combs, and this book;
It was a gift to my mother from her Aunt Marie,
complete with a quote from O.W. Holmes. My mother was as good about collecting those fond high school memories as I was (I pitched my yearbook when we cleaned out my parents’ house). But it’s stuffed full of “stuff.” I thought it had belonged to my uncle. When I realized it was my mother’s I couldn’t go on. Something was missing.
I need to be curled up in some little corner out of the rain with West Coast and Other Daughter. If you don’t mind, we’ll bring Daughter with, this time.
