The Things we Keep

I helped my friend Deborah move last week. We quickly transitioned from the stage of lovingly holding treasures and thinking about the memories they evoked, to wanting to torch the whole house, crushed by the sheer volume of accumulated stuff.

I felt those same sensations when my family moved two years ago. On the final exhausted, emotional morning, my carport was full of piles that hadn't made the first, second, or third purges, but simply could NOT come to the new house with us in the end.

Yet today, I still have too much stuff.

Both my friend's life of late and mine are examples of what we already knew-- the words painted on the wall at my old house-- "The best things in life aren't things." 

We get it.

Yet still, we do have THINGS, which is never more clear than when we must move them from one place to another.

I wanted to help Deborah more than I did, because choosing what to keep and what to donate is extremely personal. The humblest item could be full of meaning, while the most expensive isn't.

For example, one of my family's treasures is a big brown plastic mixing bowl with a handle and a spout.  It used to have a buddy, a slightly smaller orange counterpart, until Shadow chewed it up a few years ago.

These bowls have always reminded me of my childhood, a time when I felt nurtured and safe. I remember my dad sitting in his brown and orange rocking chair in his pj's, chowing down on multiple scoops of ice cream from the orange bowl, while wielding an enormous spoon.

That orange bowl took me right back to the 70's. To unsupervised kids making ice cream floats in tall glasses, always adding extra Coke as we drank them down. To roaming the neighborhood. To four square in the driveway and kick ball in the street. To bikes with banana seats, jaunts to 7-11, and the hot walk to the pool in bare feet. To figuring out how to navigate the culture of growing up.

The big brown bowl reminds me of popcorn, and watching movies with my mom and a string of friends and boyfriends on our plaid couch in the early 80's. To a nascent social life, still in the security of my home. To sleepovers, siblings, first kisses, and Saturday Night Live.

Today, when Margaret makes popcorn for one of our Survivor marathons, she always reaches for the brown bowl. She knows it's impossible to pop every kernel, that the good pieces always run out too soon, and that even though we pass the bowl back and forth between three people now, not four, it represents both her past and her present. I have a feeling that as long as the dogs never get a hold of the bowl, it will end up in her home when she is an adult.

To most eyes, the bowl is insignificant and even ugly. It does not give me the same thrill of promise and orderliness and beauty I get when I browse the matching housewares in a Target aisle.

But to my eyes, the big brown bowl means family.

What is something that you keep that would not mean anything to outside eyes?

New Home Sweet Home

We are in our new house, and it feels really, really good.

Moving was a trial, and a few times I thought I'd be crushed under the weight of our junk, of both the physical and emotional nature.

When I went to the shed where I'd stored Jack's  Legos, complete with original boxes and directions, I discovered they were covered with ants and ant larvae. Teeming waves of black covered every box, inside and out. I was so angry and defeated. "How much, Oh Lord, How much?" I groaned as I spread everything in the yard and started clean up. Then I saw the mouse droppings. Really???

Around me, neighborhood kids played and squealed, enjoying the last days of summer, and hot tears sprang into my eyes as I thought ALL OF THIS -- this move, this day, this life--- should not be going down this way!

Yet it is.

It took 8 movers 10 hours to load and unload our stuff, even though I thought I'd done a lot of culling beforehand.  That's a lot of junk. I found I was much more willing to let go of things on a steamy moving day than I had been just a few months ago. So I started piling stuff in the carport to get rid of. And I just let myself be led. Because pages of Jack's doodles might look junky to someone else but are important to me, while some wedding presents, or an uncomfortable chair, barely used these last 17 years, were better off going to new homes.

There is something about this new house that feels gracious and good.

I'm not sure what it is. It's not much different from our old one, with the exception of a massive master bedroom and bathroom. Was there a lot of frolicking and cavorting going on in master suites toward the end of the Carter administration when this house was built? Because these rooms are JUMBO.

The main living areas are smaller, cozier, and situated pretty much exactly like the old house, so I was able to quickly figure out where to place things. Old me would have relished the challenge of a new floor plan. Anna 2.0 was just glad that the paint colors were non-offensive and I didn't have too many decisions to make. I do hope I'll have some small projects to share with you in the months to come.

I worked round the clock emptying boxes even as my shoulders ached. This is the kind of work I like. Sorting, organizing, beating a stack of boxes into submission. Seeing tangible progress. Moving things here and there and back again.

The spiritual, emotional work comes less readily, and is easy to avoid it under an armload of boxes or yet another "quick trip" to Home Depot.

That is the work that says: Today is the first day of school. Today is the day I should have become a high school mom. In just a few days Margaret will outlive her older brother. How does that feel? What do I do with that? How do we integrate Jack into our new home? Did I run away from our old house? Will I be able to write a book that in some way captures what all of this is like?

The spiritual work follows me as I assure Margaret I will spend much of the day praying for her, and then she asks me, "Do you do that every first day of school?" "Yes." An unasked follow-up question hangs in the air between us, "Did you do it two years ago?" And I think of the mysterious nature of God, because of course I prayed for them both. For their health. And their safety. And their friendships. And their growth.

The mystery follows us outside when we take our traditional First Day of School pictures on the stoop, our new front stoop, and an enormous praying mantis is in Jack's space to the side of the door, right where he would be standing, and I smile and wonder about this crazy life. Praying mantis. Praying. Yes, there will be lots of prayers for this little girl today. And some will be answered the way we want while others may not.

This blog is the place where I do a lot of the emotional and spiritual work. It has been tough to be away from it and from you. But the boxes are now broken down, I can find my devotional books and most of my underwear, and I'm enjoying the calm, peaceful setting and being here with you.

Bearing Up Under Stress

If we know each other in “real life” please do not read the rest of this post. Because if you read the following story and I swear you to secrecy, you may have the best intentions, but something could go awry. You could see Margaret and me in the grocery store or at Taco Bell and instead of remembering NOT to talk about her hamster, you might see her and then get hamster on the brain. Suddenly, we’ll be chatting about hamster wheels and hamster treats, and her hamster named Bear.

Or, like me, you could get the urge to blurt out “Hamster!” as soon as you see us, just because it’s forbidden, the way I used to want to hurl my purse over a rickety bridge near my grandparents’ house every darn time I crossed over it. And I would tell myself, “I will not think of hurling my purse over the edge this time,” but then I’d get to the bridge and all I could think of was “Purse! Purse! Throw the purse!” I know I'm not alone in this, right?

So if we know each other in real life, and if the purse story hasn’t freaked you out so much that you wish to "unknow" me, please read no further.

Ok? Great.

So, I decided to clean Margaret’s pet hamster’s cage for her as a love gift. This is along the same lines as when my mother would approach me, hands outstretched, to collect my contact lenses from me and give them their monthly enzyme treatment, because although I was fully capable of doing it myself, she wanted to do something for me.

 

So, feeling virtuous and generous, I decided to clean the cage while Margaret and Tim were at the neighbors’ house. I popped “Bear” into his plastic ball and set about cleaning the cage until it sparkled. Then I got distracted and started packing some more boxes and taping them up. Then I got myself some tea. Perhaps I cruised Facebook. Perhaps.

When I remembered what I’d been doing, I hustled back upstairs to get Bear. My heart sank. All I saw was an empty yellow ball. Empty! My eyes scanned Jack’s room where Bear had been rolling so happily just moments (minutes? A half hour? Days?) before. I felt panic grip my chest.

We cannot lose Bear.

He has been such a bright spot in our lives.  I’m already praying he far outlives his life expectancy. My sister bought him for Margaret a few days after Jack’s accident. He was four months old, and that was almost two years ago. Hamsters live 2-2.5 years. Oh my. He seems pretty spry, and with the exception of his uh, male undercarriage, growing exceedingly large, he looks about how he did when we got him.

Anyway, I started scouring the room in a panic. I couldn’t think straight. I looked at the weird 3 inch gap under the door that a freakin’ hedge hog could probably squeeze through. I thought of the chaos all over the house, from the bedrooms down to the basement. If Bear found a cozy box to crawl into, and I taped him in there, what kind of surprise would we find when we moved in a week or so? Or, what if we didn’t find ever find him? What if the new owners, sensing a rodent on the loose, set out a mousetrap and? And? Did I tell you they have two cats? Or what if Shadow the dog had already gulped him down in one bite while I’d been enjoying my tea? Did she look full? Did she look guiltily satisfied?

I wasn’t sure how to start looking, because I had Shadow in her usual location-- up my skirt. Everywhere I looked, she looked too. If I tried to shut her up in another room so I could search more quickly, what if I shut her up with Bear?

So I grabbed Shadow by the collar and dragged her to each pile of boxes, clothes and the stacks of crumpled packing paper. Even in his chubby state, I knew Bear could probably run fast and that my time was running out. I grabbed the phone and called Tim and told him to come help me. I forbade him to tell Margaret what was going on.

He calmly walked in the room and said everything was going to be fine.

Did he not see the boxes everywhere? The air vents of death? The dresser drawers? Did he not know that with both a move and middle school looming, we do not need a dead hamster?

We moved Jack’s bed away from the wall. Would we find him driving a toy car or running through a Lego scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? No dice.

Tim leaned under Jack’s dresser. “I see him. He’s fine.” And he was.

Thank you, Jesus. Yes, I’d prayed about a hamster. In fact, I have no qualms if we ALL pray that Bear sets a hamster longevity record.

I haven’t told Margaret anything, and I’m thinking it’s in my best interest not to.

I just wish I didn’t want to blurt out, “HAMSTER!” every time I saw her.

 

Moving on Up

So, we're moving.

I've been waiting to tell you until the sale on our current house was final, but it's been so hard not to share what these past months have been like. You, my dears, are such a huge support to this family, and I want you to be in the know.

On surface it would be pretty easy to say, "Oh, good. Their old house probably has a lot of painful memories and it's great for them to get a fresh start." But the thing is, this house doesn't hold a lot of painful memories. It holds memories of a lot of laughter and love, which thankfully continue today. This house helps me feel close to the family that we once were, back before we knew the things we know now.

There's the thread still hanging on the back of my bedroom door where we attempted to pull out Margaret's first loose tooth, with Jack jumping up and down in excitement, Shadow getting her nose all up in the video camera, and Margaret shrieking with delight and terror as we slammed the door shut and...nothing happened. It would be at least a week before the tooth finally gave up the ghost.

There's the basement where Tim and the kids would set up games of "Rat Race," making tunnels out of sheets and chairs, and chase each other on their bellies through the maze, pelting each other with wadded up socks. There's the family room with the leather couch where we always sat lined up in a row: Margaret, Tim, Anna, Jack to watch America's Got Talent. There's this office, that used to be a laundry room, where for some reason in January 2008 I thought it might be fun to write down some thoughts about parenting and share a few house projects on something weird called a Blog. And of course there's the kitchen counter where the kids sat on stools and did their homework, or stood on their stools and told me about their days. And don't even get me started about the yard and the climbing trees.

Tim, Margaret, and I are "bloom where you are planted" people. So was Jack. I guess the fact that I live in my hometown even though I have no relatives left here, go to the church where I grew up, and even work there part-time, could be an indication of this. Jack loved this house and neighborhood so much that he didn't even like to leave it and his friends to spend a day at our pool across town. Whenever we traveled as a family, our first words in the door were, "It's good to be home." And this is our home. And it makes me smile.

So the decision to move was hard. I don't want to leave Jack's bedroom! I don't want to leave what we had here! I don't want to put our lives in boxes because it will become clear in the next house that some of the boxes don't need to be opened again, and I hate that. But the decision was mine, and I didn't come to it quickly or easily. There were just certain aspects of staying here that kept me from blooming and I don't think that was good for any of us.

Back in January we found a house that we loved that would enable us to be on a street with many of the friends who have walked beside us in our pain. Who knew Jack and know our story. There would be cool house projects to help get my decorating mojo back. It felt like we were running TO something positive rather than AWAY from something, and that felt good. Until the deal fell through.

Then we lost another one.

For a while the only house available in our price range was our current one, which sort of defeated the purpose. Tensions ran high.

We jumped on the next one that became available. Jumped! Which is unlike slowpokes like us, but we were anxious to be settled before school starts for Margaret, and it was getting too close for comfort. It's a lovely, well cared for house. The master bathroom will make you drool.

It's farther out than we were looking for, which takes us out of our immediate circle of friends. That makes me nervous, because we've grown very close to our friends since the accident. It will mean introducing ourselves and answering the question, "How many kids do you have?"

The funny thing is, the new house is almost the exact floor plan of our current house! I think that's what helped us jump on it and make a quick deal in a very competitive housing market, like within MINUTES. Margaret got on board because she could picture it,  you know? We could already figure out where the Christmas tree would go. My office is right here, just over there. So it's kind of like our house was plopped down somewhere else. Interesting.

If I'd been able to share this BIG news with you earlier, you would have had to go through the stress of getting our house ready to sell, seen where Tim and I drew the battle lines with each other as we spackled far into the night, and rooted for Margaret as she had to adapt to a reality she didn't want to face. That we really are moving and she's coming with us.

I don't know what the next weeks hold, but I have some specific things I would LOVE for you to pray about.

1) That moving does not end up being THE THING. I keep wondering what the thing will be that will ultimately push me over the edge. That will extinguish the flicker of hope that has been present since day one, even in tragedy. Maybe there won't be a THING. But I am a bit worried.

2) In the space of one week we will move from the only home Margaret remembers, she will start middle school at a new school (!), and on the 2nd day of 7th grade she will outlive her OLDER brother.

I know. It's a lot.

It's easy to second guess. It's easy to sit here at my desk and say of course we should stay. We are comfortable here. This house is what we know. That it's been almost two years and we really can handle anything at this point, so why not stay?

And what if we feel even more disconnected from Jack there? To live in a house where he's never been is kind of like starting a new year that he's never been in. Suckish. But do-able.

So there's a lot to pray about.

I guess the biggest prayer is that we will BLOOM.