In a month, I am moving to Colorado. In 6 months, I’m getting married.
I have no rights to this picture whatsoever.
I can expect that I will never return to my childhood home to live ever again. And I can’t take everything with me. In fact, I can’t take anything with me that Cecilia, my little blue Honda Civic, can’t cart 2000+ miles across the country with me.
So, after much delaying, I have begun the task of trying to purge all of the things that I don’t need, beginning of course, with the obvious and necessary task of deleting music I collected in college that I will never listen to.
A stylish project for every room
After I made it through the bands beginning with ‘A’, I moved on to my bookshelf where I got stuck.
As I look through all of the things I collected over the years, I’m left asking myself many questions. Why did I use binders and nice folders for all of my reports in elementary school? How does one properly dispose of beat up, broken ringed binders without just adding to landfill waste? What was I planning on stencilling with this kit? Why did my parents spend so much money on me?
What am I supposed to do with the journal I kept in second grade or the one I kept in fifth grade?
March 1, 1994,
I love my pet kitten. I was lonely when I didn’t have her. Her name is Alexandra Millbur…She is a beautyful white and orange striped kitten…One of my favorite things to do is to play with her…She is a regular sized kitten. She sleeps on my bed with me. She is very cute. My kitten is special because I love my kitten and she loves me.
[2nd grade drawing of orange and white striped kitten]
But I never had a cat. I only wanted one, so I wouldn’t be lonely, so I could love her and so she could love me.
Maybe I’m afraid that if I throw this away, I will be choosing to cast that little girl to oblivion, no record left of her, no images and bits to call her forth from the land of memory.
I formed all of my letters so carefully.
Here is an astoundingly artistic and beautiful little book on Honduras I made as a 4th grader. This is clearly not something worthwhile to anyone else, so Goodwill is out of the question. Here’s an extensive report on the contents of two Charleston museums from 7th grade. Written by my teacher (one of my favorite teachers) in the report:
This is beautifully written and neatly and colorfully presented. You must have put in hours and hours and hours.
Yes, I too think I must have. Do I just throw it away now, purpose served? Thoughts, opinions, collages, pictures, feelings, now irrelevant?
Here are newspaper clippings about me. It’s all old news now.
Niecy Nash
Am I just going to leaving this all for someone else to take care of when my parents sell this house, or when they or I die?
Now, I love me some Clean Sweep. I know exactly what Miss Niecy Nash would say. It’s just stuff, right? And yes, most of it is. The stencil kit is going to Goodwill along with old textbooks, puzzles I finished (and didn’t finish).
But some of it feels like the last vestiges of my life and the many girls I have been and have wanted to be, scraps of myself that I’m being asked to condense, store, choose between, trash or save.
