Some weekends you remember because of a significant event -- a birthday, an anniversary, an overnight stay somewhere. This one just completed, I'm sure I'll remember as The Weekend We Filled A Dump Box (All By Ourselves).Starting just before 10 each morning, we worked until 5 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday, plus another hour or two after dinner both nights.
We started in the basement, cleaning out the long-neglected utility room -- a L-shaped space that we had managed to fill with bats and balls, toys and books, cross country skis and poles, sleeping bags, children's clothes and schoolwork, old trophies (from Lori's weightlifting days) and much, much more.
We continued the next day with an assault on the attic, plowing through box after box of holiday decorations, "important papers," family photos, adult and children's clothes, more tattered suitcases than I could count ... even some first-generation video games (Atari, anyone?) and parts to a waterbed.
What's the big deal, a reader might ask? People clean out (er, throw out) their old stuff all the time. Well, yes. But when one family fills an entire Dumpster all by themselves, it's not just about the junk you haul to the curbside. Of course, it's about memories. Every single thing in one of those boxes was important enough to one of us -- Lori, me, one of the kids -- to save it. The emotions triggered in rediscovering certain items sometimes were powerful enough to make you stop and ask someone else in the room, "Hey, remember this?"
You'd share a laugh or a grimace, a sentimental nod or a roll of the eyes. Obviously, we hung onto too much stuff for wa-a-y too long. A manual typewriter with a dried-out ink ribbon; a Kodak slide projector straight out of the '50s (it belonged to Lori's parents); a box of baseball cards; and what seemed like two dozen Easter baskets (were they multiplying, like bunnies, in the dark?).
More than once, I asked: What were we thinking when we saved this? Or, less politely, why the hell do we still have this? And even, what is this?
As Lori pointed out, she was busy trying to be a good mom during all those years, so it mattered more to set something aside -- a child's artwork or school binder or the newest class photo -- than it did to rummage through what was already there and throw something away. Fair enough. Not that I was an innocent party. Of course, I contributed to the build-up. I was certain I'd wear that particular sweater or shirt again, even as I grew into another size. I just knew I'd read that magazine I was stuffing into a box in a darkened corner.
When all was said and done, we'd accomplished something pretty spectacular as a family. (And here is a good time to say thanks to Simone and Nathan for their help; Jordan, of course, is stationed with the Army in Texas.) We regained some breathing room in the house we've made a home for the past 23 years. We can look around and appreciate the newly redecorated space with a sense of pride. (And here is where I bow down to Lori. Even before this weekend, she had single-handedly cleaned the attic on the other side of the house and made countless trips to Goodwill with sack after sack of clothes and shoes. You'd think Imelda Marcos had gone into hiding here...)
It was an exhausting weekend, for sure, but The Weekend We Filled a Dump Box was worth it, for sure. Feels like we've got a fresh start. And yet those pieces of the past, we'll always carry with us. Nothing can replace the visual and tactile memories of seeing your younger self in an old photo, of holding up an infant's T-shirt, of gently squeezing a long-forgotten stuffed animal.
Photo: http://www.fotosearch.com/
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