The shed in our backyard is starting to disintegrate, a sort of slow neglected death from water damage and age that becomes more obvious as the roof leaks and the only thing keeping the door shut is a piece of wood wedged against it from the outside. We are claaasssssy.
I’m okay with its imminent demise as I’ve always hated that fucker with a passion because it is in the worst position possible and obstructs the view of the back yard from one of the bedroom windows. Our backyard is a nice place, being able to see it from my bedroom window would be a good thing. If I had had half a brain, I would have taken a sledgehammer to it years ago and built a massive bonfire from the guts of it. I don’t know why the previous owners built it so close to the house, except to avoid any town officials from noticing and making them pay for the permit necessary to place a shed of that size on the property. Gods, I wish I knew then what I know now about owning a house. But that is a whole different post.
With the big blue shed falling apart, the crap it’s been swallowing for the past 16+ years needs to be hauled out of its gullet and sorted to determine just how vital it is to keep a couple dozen boxes of paperbacks that haven’t seen the light of day since 1997. I’m a book junkie and have a tendency to hang onto just about every book I’ve read, figuring I’ll probably reread just about every one of them at some point. Except that damn Eat, Pray, Love crap which sucked so bad that I left it in a doctor’s office waiting room in disgust, barely through the Pray part. I truly do not get why people like this book so much. I know that blogging is its very own brand of navel gazing documenting how wonderful we all are, but c’mon, that book reeks of a self-indulgency that makes me ill.
There are a good number of boxes that just need to be put out to the curb because while the smelly box of 11 year old baby clothes is so not worth keeping, I found a few items sifting through all the decaying boxes and moldy paper that I’m really having a difficult time deciding what should be done with them.
The dead mouse found in the bottom of the plastic container is not one of them however. shudder, ick, eeeewwwww.
Carpentry tools from my grandfather and father. And I mean a fuck load of tools, people. Three large Rubbermaid totes of hand tools. Both of these men dabbled in carpentry and furniture-making all their lives, despite earning their living by other means and I don’t think they ever got rid of anything. My hoarding trait clearly comes naturally. Some of these my husband and I will probably, maybe, use when we work on projects, because we like to dabble in woodworking too, but just how many 50 year old hand planers does one person need? I think I counted ten. There are so many files & rasps and I’m not sure what half of them are meant for. Something in the vicinity of five different sharpening stones.
The male child plans on taking wood shop next year and while that’s a grand plan, thoughts of him wielding power tools sorta scares me, just a little, should I hang onto them for him or donate them to his school’s wood shop?
In this stash of tools are plumb bobs that have to be almost a hundred years old. Part of me wants to keep these forever. I mean, these were tools handled by the men in my family for years. I remember my father in the basement workshop, crafting the dining room set they used for years, showing me how to sand wood for the smoothest surface, sawing the tip of his finger partially off. My Dad guided me through the steps of building an album case for my bedroom when I was fifteen. It’s my nightstand to this day. Two years ago, I took an old, battered two-door cabinet that my grandfather and father had built back before I was born for my grandmother's sewing room, and I stripped and sanded it, painted and stamped it. It’s now very pretty and holds the family games, school supplies and some art supplies. Some of the tools that I found probably helped make it. How do I just get rid of those?
In the dampest corner, in boxes falling to pieces, I found china, and a few weird orange colored slugs. A pale cream color (the china, not the slugs), delicate roses adorning the surface with platinum edging. These neglected pieces were my grandmother’s china. I had forgotten that it had been stashed in my shed, waiting for someone to decide what to do with it. My grandmother had been very proud of her china and I think it was the only set she’d ever owned.
Talking to my sister about it the other day, we recalled the lectures we’d get about being careful when we were conscripted into washing and drying these dishes after Sunday, or holiday, dinners. While the men sat around in recliners and watched football, the bastards. It’s pretty china, but not something we'll use, it's a little too frilly for my taste and we’re not a china type household, frankly it wouldn’t be long before multiple pieces are broken. Do I hold onto it for either of my kids? Do I sell it? Do I give it away?
There are memories attached to these pieces and I’m a memory hoarder. I like to hold and touch items that have my history attached to them, the sentiment might be more what I want to keep, but for me, some of that is wrapped into the items. Now that I found them again, it’s very difficult to let go. Because I am a sap.
Maybe wanting to hold onto this stuff is directly related to not having my parent’s around any longer, and knowing that my sister and I are really the only two left with the memories connection to these items. My kids didn’t get a chance to know my grandparents, and their time with my parent’s was short, so these memories are all I have to share with them. But do my memories of these items, of these people, really have meaning to them? I know they hold fast to their memories of my parent’s but theirs are vastly different than mine and I want them to know these things, to show them more of these people that are very much a part of them. Or am I just trying to pawn off the decision making process, turning my kids into mini hoarders?
Memories are weird things, they are personal and individual. My sister and I have different memories of the same people, places and things. We approach these memories differently. She doesn’t care for the tangible item-linked memory. For me, those two are vital together. It’s not that I forget, it’s that if I have something to touch, to see, maybe the distant of those memories won’t feel so huge.
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