Reading and Writing and Stuff

So back in April I wrote a post about being Sentimental or is it Sediment. I just finished re-reading it and well. I wish I could say that my position on the subject had changed or that I have found the answer or seen the light. I have not. I am still wrestling with the stuff and the memories. Now I am not saying that we have not gotten rid of more stuff. A total of 11 bags of clothes have been donated and about 4 thrown out which is amazing considering the lady only wore about 3 outfits. And I am not talking kitchen garbage bags I am talking 30 gallon outdoor trash bags. Since then I have taken some 10 boxes of stuff to an antique auction and am still waiting for the results of how that has done. So stuff is going away. Craigslist has not been the help I thought it would be to get rid of some of the furnishings but I am going to post the items again. Now that it is time for kids to go back to school maybe some first time apartment owner could use a dining room table and chairs or a bookshelf. I could only hope that they would also want the books on the shelf as well but I doubt we will be that lucky.

The thing that I have kind of morphed my thoughts of my mom's stuff and her memory to me and my stuff and the memory of me. If mom's stuff doesn't matter to others than neither will mine and I have devalued myself to a place I would prefer not to be. There are things that the memories are so strong when I look at in her house and I think no one is going to look at anything and hold me that dear. I will give the strangest example: My mom had a cat years ago that would pee on anything to mark it. So to keep the cat from peeing on mom's shoes she used to pick them up and sit them on a dining room chair. Well the cat died years ago but mom always continued to pick up her shoes and sit them on the chair. And after she passed I noticed one day the shoes sitting on the chair and I thought to pick them up and throw them out. And then I looked at them. Hmm. I see them in my head right now and the tears are running down my face. It is just a stupid pair of deck shoes but I swear if they are tossed now I would be so upset. It has been suggested to me to take a picture of them to remind me of her habit. I know I am not going to bring the chair and the shoes to my house to sit in my dining room. I will end up getting rid of them but for now they sit there.

So my own new found personal lack of value is a self destructive thing that I know is just over thinking the whole thing. But the great thing about my brain is I just don't let go of it. The thoughts sit in my head and get stirred around within my daily thoughts and now I found myself wishing for happier thoughts and brighter days.

I am hoping by writing these things down that I can let them go. I have thought them they are of no value to me and now they can be gone. I am going to say on a positive note that even though I have not posted anything recently I have written some. Still not finished with a poem that I carry in my purse just in case the thoughts to complete it all come together one day when I am not near pen and paper. But I also have attended a reading of fiction and non-fiction at an art gallery in St. Pete. It was very nice and I did read the piece I wrote for mom. Yes, I cried but when I was done the lady in charge said that mom would be proud of me for reading it. And another lady said she wished she would have written after her mother passed. So over all that was a good experience and I would like to write something new between now and September when there will be another reading event. Something a little less close to my heart even though that is where the writing comes from so I doubt I can distance my heart from my writing.

Well the sun is starting to come up and I feel a little bit better. I have shared a memory or two and spilled more tears and of my guts than I probably should but I will head back to bed.

Hear is to happier days.

What are you saving for?

Some people save for the future, for a rainy day, for a vacation but my mom seamed to want to save everything. She saved her good clothes for a cruise. She saved pictures to share and she saved history and memories and things that might someday be valuable as though they were all things that were valuable.

It is funny though because my mother and grandmother both used good things as though they were everyday things. The living room furniture we sit on is very old wicker furniture. Original cushions and paint, if you know anything about wicker furniture you would think this stuff should be in a museum and we sit on it, sleep on it and have Christmas every year on it. Grandma never drank out of a plastic cup. She was always drinking her water or soda out of a fancy glass. She said, if you have it you might as well use it. She would however wear her good clothes everyday, just because they were nice.

But back to the saving part of my mom. She always had the spirit to save things that she thought might one day have a value. Like a bank account in her house. She saved the books we read as kids, she probably has every golden book written before 1974 and cookbooks. She saved the Fischer Price toys we played with as kids. Recently I even found the Barbie dream house folded up at the top of the closet. Really mom.

Her and Grandma liked to go to garage sales and thrift stores and they each had their things they liked to find. Grandma always liked angels and frogs and mom always liked birds and St. Francis and we joke about the shrine on the butcher's block in the living room. What you don't have a butcher's block in your living room? Well your dad probably doesn't have a cannon either. What can I say? My parents were always different.

But now mom and grandma are both gone and what my mother said we would go through and clean out is now down to myself and my siblings. My brother has cleaned up and cleaned out the kitchen but the cabinets go to the ceiling and he said, you know there is stuff in all of them. Yep. Glass doesn't get the money it used to. People don't care if they drink out of fancy glasses or ones from Target. Sorry Target but there is something to be said for crystal. Not that the stuff mom had was anything fantastic just better than the everyday glasses we drank out of. And people don't know the difference between a champagne flute and a sherry glass anymore and don't care. So they would not have a set of 8 of each plus rocks glasses and tall glasses and wine glasses and you see how many glasses one can have.

So I have told my sisters that I wanted to do some of this on my own at first. Why? I don't really know. I just know to see things thrown out that my mom held on to right now is just too much for me.
I had cleaned out stuff from her bedroom back in the summer trying to get her to use her own bed to sleep in instead of sleeping on that ancient old wicker couch but even with her room cleaned out some she did not want to sleep in there. She felt that if something happened to her back there no one would come looking for her.

Yesterday I pulled out a few boxes of things that were already boxed to get rid of and filled a couple boxes with things that have no sentimental attachment and will try to sell them at a church garage sale today. But when finished loading the car I sat and looked around and started to see my mom in the things that she saved. I know I don't have to do this now and it is probably too soon but if I don't do it someone else will want to do it for me and then I will get upset and then I will be like mom. I feel it. If someone touches the wrong thing now, I would put up a wall that my mom would. She would be ridiculous and let us get rid of nothing. But I learned as I got older if you showed her a few things that she to had no attachment to that she would start and next thing you knew she could get a room cleaned up and box up things she was ready to get rid of. It just had to be her idea.

I have found myself the last few weeks wearing good things I would never wear because, well I felt like wearing them. I know no future is guaranteed to us so I might as well wear the things I like and eat off the good dishes and drink from the fancy glasses because what am I saving them for. The future doesn't care about the past. It is a hard pill to swallow that some of the things I want to save no one else will. And I know my house can't hold all the things I want to save so that part is going to take some time and the fact that I have no children to instill the value of these items just because my mom saw a value in them.

I think it all comes back to my memory. I remember my mom telling me that the butcher's block came from the Fish Restaurant that used to be at the bottom of the hill in Maas Brother's parking lot before you went across the causeway and how it sat in our garage for years until my mom said it finally did not smell like fish anymore and she sanded and varnished it and how it will take 4 grown men to lift the top but the legs are light as a feather. Or how that wicker furniture came out of a house down the street from an estate sale. Original paint and cushions. Mom was very proud of that purchase. She cherished the pictures my grandma painted. The one in the living room on brown wrapping paper that is a chalk drawing of a fishing boat or the train or flowes she painted. She would paint ties that my great grandfather wore that had the L&N trains that he worked on. We don't have one of those but we do have a picture of him wearing one. Grandma signed the things she painted simply Jane. Don't forget the nativity scene that mom painted when we were kids. So simple but not so valuable? Well to me they are.

As they say you can't take it with you. Otherwise she would have had us pack it up for her. Just kidding. She thought by saving these items that one day, some day she would cash in or share her wealth which may not have any monetary value but Sentimental Value that is what a lot of these things have and held for her and now me.

Miss you mom.