Memory Lane Is Very Dusty

I thought my son who’s still speaking to me was coming over this evening, but when we realized he wasn’t coming, Anita and I had only one thought: let’s unpack more boxes! Sure, it was over 100 degrees again, but we hydrated and got to unpacking.

Unfortunately, the first box we went after contained a faux flower arrangement that had been sitting in the “art niche” at our Braesgate house for close to 20 years. I’m thinking it hadn’t been dusted very often ever. I think we lost a couple of years of lung health as we picked up fake flower after fake flower, trying to find what was at the bottom of the box.

I’m certainly glad what was at the bottom was my Charlie Brown pottery vase. (He was a relative on my mother’s side who used clay from near the St. John’s River to make raku ware, which it turns out was a little brittle, so the top of my vase broke.) By the way, somewhere around the house is a Christmas ornament he made – the article I linked to above said Vice President Mondale had one in his house, too.

Oh yeah, the flower arrangement was really nice, and I always loved it, because my sister made it for us. But, I think I enjoyed it 20 years enough.

Other things went bye-bye, and it was the hard stuff. My collection of knitting magazines starting from 1980 had to go. My dream of owning a yarn shop with a knitting library is officially dead. It’s okay, most of the patterns are now available online.

I did NOT throw away any family photos, and I even found a little trove of items from when I was working at Wolfram Research and met the kids’ dad. I was apparently very proud of my cars (the first ones I ever bought new with my own money). I think I once made someone so angry with me for talking about my cars that they stopped talking to me. That may explain why I never said anything when I got my last few cars. Maybe I should get over it, right?

What else did we save? More record albums for my vinyl-loving kid and my mother’s cookbooks, including her vintage Florida cookbooks. My good coat and Lee’s nice jackets that had been in an entry closet. And, well, knitting books. Sorry, I can’t get rid of everything!

This is hard work, culling and keeping. But, knowing that I am accomplishing this has helped me a lot as I deal with all the chaos and confusion going on in my life, this country, and the world. I can control my clutter!