Stuff

Two weekends ago, I stood in my parents’ basement, mulling over a lifetime of stuff - college notebooks, high school yearbooks, middle school love letters. American Girl dolls, spelling tests, home videos, Beanie Babies. Lots and lots of Beanie Babies. I started out with a pile of “things to keep”, a “pile to give away”, and a “pile to discard”.

The piles grew equally at first, until I’d sifted through so many memories that I had to realize it was time to move away from the things that stood as mere symbols of various stages of my still-budding existence. The dolls, their clothes, their beds, their lunch boxes that matched my own in elementary school. The hours I’d spent playing with them as a child were vivid in my memory, as was the day I stood before my mother, suddenly aware of how many toys I had but no longer had any use for, and confessed that I didn’t know how to play with dolls anymore. I remembered the unanticipated calmness with which she responded, “Okay. Should we move them out of your bedroom?”

Didn’t the value of our things lie in the people we had become in the process of owning them, of touching them, of using them until we couldn’t use them any longer? Wasn’t their value now in the memories we feared we might lose? As the piles of stuff grew with things we hadn’t touched in two years, in five years, in twelve years, I started to think of the space they clouded - space in my parents’ basement, space in my small apartment, space in our emotional bodies. Space that needed to be cleared if we were to progress from here.

I’ve always been sensitive to the energy “stuff” creates; does it lift me up or does it drain me? A couple hours of pouring through stuff, and I’m absolutely ruined. I’ll eagerly walk ten miles through the streets of New York in a day, exploring pathways and people and places, but a couple hours with stuff and I’m destroyed. A couple hours with stuff in my parents’ basement, and my “piles of things to give away” and “things to trash” start to topple over. The things in my “pile to keep” start making their way over to the other two piles. I bring the remaining “pile of stuff to keep” over to my apartment, and two-thirds of it goes.

A couple hours with stuff, and suddenly nothing seems valuable except the memories of what it all once meant to me. A time when those things were important and fit my needs. Now they represent parts of me that have not disappeared, but have changed shape. Now it seems the only stuff I need are clothes for work and travel, and beautiful pottery and picture frames to infuse life into my apartment. And cat supplies. My six pound cat takes up as much space in my apartment as I do. What does a dainty cat do with a seven-foot cat condo? He climbs it though, and I call it his kitty Hilton. All it means is less space for things I don’t need but can’t get rid of.

My mom feels the same way about stuff as I do, but parting with my American Girl dolls was a much more emotional process for her. Everyone always says not to get rid of those things, to hold on to them dearly for the day someone can use them. But it’s been over twelve years since anyone has loved those things, and I’m nowhere near having daughters who would play with them. I can’t commit myself to a relationship at this point in my life, let alone children. I’d rather someone play with them who needs them as I once did. If I ever have daughters, they’ll want to play with the toys and dolls that fit their own needs, anyways. Eventually, my mother demanded that everyone hold their tongues and look away as she offered up the dolls – and all of their dresses, shoes, hairbrushes, nightgowns, sleeping bags, purses, petticoats, polos, parkas – to friends with grandchildren.

I don't mind. My parents, in their sixties, are ready to move into a simpler stage of their lives, finally freed from the constraints of a child not wholly separated from home. All of the stuff that matters to me is now in my small apartment - and I can hardly find the space for a microwave. I've already distanced myself from my childhood, except for the relationships, the lessons, and a lot of photographs gained along the way. The photographs alone, organized neatly by my mother into dozens of albums, could take up an entire wall in my 550 square foot home. My mother assures me with half a smile that these albums will be my wealthiest inheritance.