Today I tried to keep busy. I decided to clean out the garage. The oldest little person busied himself with his educational software and proceeded to teach his almost-four-year-old side kick how to play the Fourth Grade CD from the series. The littlest person seemed entranced in PBS and NickJr. today. She spent a lot of her time playing quietly alone in her room. It amazes me how self entertained they are at home and how they just aren't in other people's homes. This left a lot of time for me to do my thing.

I have this habit of dealing with my repressed feelings by cleaning out closets and drawers and storage bins and giving things away. Sometimes this includes things that have great sentimental value to me. I don't know why I do it. But it is some sort of shedding process. Until today I didn't realize that I routinely do this because of my own inability to cope with the changing events of my life and how it makes me feel.

Other people pack things into their attics and basements to keep forever, so that they may dig through boxes in their old age and remember the events of their lives. It is nice to think of some old grandma sitting in the attic with her grandchildren showing them things that belonged to her as a child.

But keeping things I don't use and hauling them around with me from one dwelling to another is agonizing. Even if I had a house that I planned to live in until I died, I would not want a basement or an attic packed with junk. I keep very few things. Mostly things that are very special to me. Things that signify some sort of important milestone in my life and my children's lives. But I have noticed that even those few precious things I have, I end up giving away eventually. As if keeping them is just not an option. I pack things up and send them off as some sort of cleansing ritual. Some people, like my mother, have mental quirks that make it impossible for them to throw anything away. I can't keep anything.

As I sat in my garage today, sorting through the very last box of baby clothes that I have held on to, I came across four quilts that my Great Grandmother had sewn for my babies. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I started this project knowing they were there and needed to dig them out. I don't know. Anyway, as I sat and determined which little dresses and booties and sleepers to keep and which to pack up to send North for when my sister grows up and has a family, I began to cry. I couldn't stop. I couldn't send it back down to the place it escaped from. I just cried. I cried because I have lost someone I love, I cried because I have no ties with anyone anymore, I cried because I have no ability to get past the emptiness of it all. I cried because my children are not babies anymore, I cried because I am not going to have anymore newborns to cuddle. I cried because everything has changed over and over and over again. And I probably cried for reasons I am not even aware of. But I cried. A lot.

Posted by gwendolyn on March 28, 2001 at 05:38 PM