Confessions Of A Pack-Rat

PACK-RAT:  one who saves everything thinking it may be of use someday, because one likes it, because it has memories attached, because because because.  Check my picture on Facebook.  It is followed by the definition of pack-rat.

Tonight I went through some old boxes, just to see what was in them, looking for my long-misplaced yearbook from 1969.  I don't know why I still have my corsage from one of the proms.  I mean, I MARRIED the man, for Pete's sake.  There were birthday cards, kids' art, old books.  I found a bag of chocolate molds from my candy store.  I found stuffed animals that did NOT belong to my sons, 31 and 33.  I found our first set of dishes (I thought those went out at a garage sale years ago).  There were flea-market finds and toys, clothes from a size ten to a size whatever.  I found my aunt's amber horses and promptly made room for them in the curio cabinet. There were magazines I had intended to read for the recipes and buttons I had intended to sew.

I got a few garbage bags and a couple of new boxes.  I put many things at the curb.  I hardly made a dent.

One of my stages of reinvention is to clean house, literally and figuratively.  I need to clear my home, the closets and the drawers and the dreaded basement of almost forty years of accumulation.  I need to cleanse my body of the excess pounds and my mind of the worthless trash in it.  There are some people who have to go, too, because they make me feel constantly on eggshells when they are around.  I want my home, my head,  my heart and my life to be full of the people and things that I truly love.

Little mementos mean so much to me.  My youngest grandson gave me a piece of rope this past Christmas so I could tie up  the monsters.  My father-in-law whittled a basket from a walnut shell.  I have my mother's jewelry box, full of the cherubs she valued.  One time, I gave back a gift because I was so angry at the giver I couldn't see straight.  I wish it would be returned to me.  These things are part of the reason I am a pack-rat.  Some of those things will have to be pried from my cold, dead hands.

Tonight I rid myself of some of the junk, mostly papers and magazines and plastic containers. Some of the clothes and shoes I bagged for donation.   I still have not found my yearbook. 

When I got to the box with the corsage, I looked at the blue carnations and baby's breath, the silver ribbon still attached.  I had worn a pale blue gown, he had a blue tux with a paisley print.  It was 1968.  Tonight that same man put on a blue uniform when he left for work. 

I put the corsage back in the box.  Some junk is too priceless to throw away.