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Ink Aria
“Stuff”—Minimized, Lost, and Appraised
Renee Gehman
Every
now and then—about once a month—I go on what I’ll call a “decluttering
spree” in my bedroom. Usually initiated by a sense of more things than
places to put them, at such times I hunker down at a closet or a set of
drawers or a box in my storage space and commence my own artless form
of separating the sheep from the goats, filling boxes for thrift stores
and bags for trash, then retaining what I still can’t quite let go.
Despite a regular vigilance with
this procedure that functions as an anti-shopping spree, I am always
left with a sizeable accumulation of stuff, and there are several
reasons for this. First, as a teacher, student, and obedient keeper of
files, I am doomed to an eternal surplus of papers.
Second, I face a host of
well-intentioned conspirators against my attempts to keep things
simple. I speak of fellow college students of yore who left behind
perfectly good cooking ware and textbooks and stereos at a year’s
end—all free for the taking—because a flight home left no room for
excess. I speak of the women in my family who for the past decade have
at Christmas bestowed upon me gifts accompanied by a “you probably
can’t use it now, but it’s for your hope chest!”
Except the hope chest reached
capacity about five years ago. Pie plates, Longaberger baskets, and
blankets are all good and useful things, and I certainly appreciate
practicalities and thinking ahead. Nonetheless, such things become
distressing to store when you’re still living at home with parents.
Last
week I joined a group from my church on a service trip to New Orleans,
where many people don’t have a lot of stuff. For one week, we worked in
groups on home repair for victims of Hurricane Katrina (yes, five years
later there is still much work to be done).
Post-storm-and-flooding, amid
reconstruction the loss of stuff continues still, as heard in stories
where tools are stolen from construction sites, or where people have
broken into houses being rebuilt and have ripped out new wiring through
new dry wall.
As rebuilding has continued these past few years, a question many have
asked of the victims is Why do they stay? If nothing is left, why not
start over again somewhere different, somewhere safer, where selves and
stuff might be better preserved?
Quite often the response is
something like, “This is my home. I’ve lived here all my life.” That
was certainly the case for the church pastor whose home we worked on.
She stopped by one day to check out the paint job, taking time also to
pray around us workers. As she prayed, you could feel strength and
faith radiate right off of her, and though she did not use these words,
I imagined I heard in her prayer the scattered lines of a hymn text
that would precipitate my thoughts the rest of that week in New Orleans:
I can only speculate on how the
meaning and value of home and stuff is affected for hurricane victims
(and others) who have lost it all. Does it mean more to you once it’s
gone forever? Or, seeing that you’re still alive and the world still
turning, do you conclude that maybe it didn’t matter so much after all?
Do you embrace the opportunity to start anew, clutter-free, and pick
and choose the stuff you want and need back in your life and home?
In any case, I suspect you
understand more deeply the finiteness of things once a levee breaks and
all your things are swept away, including your house right off its
foundation, as was the case for the pastor who prayed for us.
Having spoken earlier of
conspirators against my decluttering attempts I must also speak of
myself, retainer of 20 books “published” in elementary school, many of
which I claimed were part of a series-in-the-works on two characters
named Sarah and Johnny, whose arms protruded out of their
midsections.
Awards for homework completion
or a job well done on an art project, wedding programs, drawings from
three-year-olds, greeting cards, notes and letters. . . . At what point
does it stop feeling like a sin to throw these things out? How many
times must one stare at whole piles of sentimental treasures and
wonder, If I just threw this out, would I even regret it? before one
actually then proceeds to throw said piles out? I did once manage to
dispose of all of my pottery creations from elementary school—except of
course the Phillies pot whose lid had a baseball handle on it. That one
I still need.
On a spectrum with, say, a Zen Buddhist monk at
one end and a bona fide packrat at the other (the kind, perhaps,
whose lawn is littered with old car parts and kitchen sinks), I still
like to think I’m a healthy distance from the packrat extreme. Just as
I idealistically believe that my molasses-in-January career path will
one day lead me to the bliss of professional stability, so too am I
hopeful that, as years and experience accumulate, I may continue to
refine my ability to authentically appraise the stuff of life, to the
point where, should the sweetest frame be swept from under me and
everything else with it, I could still find the peace in wholly leaning
on the stuff of faith.
—Renee Gehman, Souderton, Pennsylvania, is assistant editor, DreamSeeker Magazine; high school teacher; and wrestles with how to handle stuff.
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