things & stuff

Things are just things and stuff is just stuff.  How many times in our lives have we heard something like that said?  Typically followed by, it’s the memories that are made that matter.  I spent the most recent rainy day we had holed up in our basement sorting through eight bins of things & stuff that contained my childhood.

I had moved out of my childhood home the week after I married my husband, I was 20 years old and with me I took a bin full of pictures, a bag of books, a car full of clothes and a few pieces of furniture.  Otherwise my room remained largely untouched.  The shelves lining the walls packed with books and figurines.  The back of the door plastered with pictures cut from magazines of Heath Ledger and Brad Pitt.  The closet full of boxes with trinkets, old toys, CD’s and old formals hung collecting dust.

Seven years later, my mom finally decided to redecorate my room with walls painted with trees and the ceiling painted blue with fluffy white clouds and effectively graduate it from a childhood bedroom to a more mature counterpart with brown paint, antique furniture and a floral print on the wall.  One summer day, I arrived at my childhood home to use the beach (something I never plan to outgrow) and my mom was standing arms crossed on the porch with eights bins and a Brad Pitt poster sitting next to her and she firmly told me, “you can come in after you load this into your car.”  My mom had tried several times over the years to get me to take my stuff.  I finally complied; I did not really think I had a choice.  When I arrived home later that day and my husband began hauling bins to the basement, he exasperatedly said, “What are in these anyway?” He had brought a book of baseball cards and a bin of mementos that he’s mother had compiled when we married.   I peeked and I mean peeked (squinty forehead and a quick pinched glance) into the one of the bins.  Overwhelmed by what I saw I quickly said, “I’ll take care of these another day,” and to the basement they went.  My husband also asked what I planned to do with Brad.  It was a poster of Brad Pitt in all his Legends of the Fall glory; I don’t suppose I could hang it on the back of our bedroom door, do you?  It went in the trash but the rest of bins began collecting dust.

In northern Minnesota, you only ever head to the basement in the summer on rainy days and this last Saturday started just that way.  I sat cross legged on the concrete going through the bins.  Needless to say, I laughed, I cried and remembered a lot of things I thought I’d forgotten.  Some highlights included a picture of my husband from early in our relationship that is going to be placed on my nightstand, all of my diplomas, a hotel Bible stolen in my honor by a good friend, my Cabbage Patch doll (her name was Kelda Jo Beana, REALLY), a couple middle school journals that captured some pretty raw emotion and angst, and a copy of Antione de Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince that my mom gave my dad for Valentines’ Day in 1973 that I had at some point apparently confiscated from his bookshelf.  There were also a lot of stuffed animals and trinkets that must have meant something to me at some point but most I could not place.  In the end two bins worth was either trashed or donated and two are marked, “just in case we ever have a girl” with stuff that I think will be easy for me to part with in a few years once that is determined.  There are still four bins full of things & stuff in our basement, my childhood, memories of a time and place when I was someone else but ultimately guided me to who I am today.

I guess sometimes you can’t separate the things & stuff from the memories…