Hoarders

My daughter-in-law gave me a compliment. She said to my son, "I think the thing your mother has that seems to work for her is the art of letting go." She was only half right. I also have the "art" (a euphemism here) of collecting things. What I seem never to have too many of are books, pictures, lamps, candles, mirrors, pillows and clocks. Mix these with un-numbered and eclectic other mostly small art objects and you would not walk into my house and think I had ever let anything go! I do pride myself, however, in arranging things in a pleasing way so that my house has a cozy feeling, sort of like the "Olde Curiosity Shoppe." These are the things that have survived the rather frequent purge of moving. Some of the cast-offs have gone to relatives and friends and children. When I see one of my old possessions in one of these places I smile. "Oh, I remember this!" and I'll gaze at a miniature replica of a screen door I bought at a craft fair in my home town on Fathers' Day, 1993. It reminded me of summers in my childhood home and the sound of our kitchen's screen door with its squeaky coiled spring and subsequent slam announcing the presence of someone coming in or going out. This same daughter-in-law, Nancy, has it hanging on her kitchen wall.

Each piece that graces my home has a story. Even if it was bought in a thrift shop it has an unknown story and that in itself is intriguing to me. I came along and rescued it from the half-way house to belong again, to feel loved again. And I do love it as if it were mine from the beginning when someone thought it up and crafted it into life, even though I'll never know its secret past. Sometimes I tell myself to get busy and write the history of each of my possessions, so far back as I know it. That could, indeed, fill a book and maybe save these precious things and their memories from another half-way house, unless the book goes to the dumpster first.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. Backtrack: It's 1:37 a.m. this morning. I'm awakened by the sound of voices. Oh, Katie has gone to sleep and left the TV in our bedroom turned on. Then the program begins to sink in. It's one I've never dared look at before. "Hoarders." My eyes open to slits and I see a short woman with tousled white hair and cotton print dress being scolded. She bows her head in shame as those Others invade her home. But is it a home, or is it a very untidy store room? People crawl through boxes and garbage bags full of junky stuff. Odd collections of old curtain rods, quilts, glassware, hangers, shoes with furry anklets, piled half way up to the ceiling! Yes, it is her home, the stuff she has accumulated which she could not part with. The Others are saying, "This is despicable! We've got to clear it out! All of it! Now!"

"No!" she cries. I mean she's really crying. "Not that! No! Please, not that!"

This is too much for me to lie here and take. I'm too sleepy to wake up and hunt for  the remote. It's probably hidden under Katie's blanket and she's sound asleep. She'll surely wake up and turn it off before long. I'll just drift back to sleep. But the show goes on, and on, and on. Another peek, another appalling scene, another pitiful little creature in the midst of the suffocating chaotic mess of relics swiped from dumpsters and cheap shop bargains, now invaded by that same band of Others who say they're there to help!

I pull the pillow over my head and try for sleep again. It's no use. Finally, I get up, recover the remote right where I thought it was and click the power button off. Whew!

Then, in the blissful quiet of the room I settle back between the covers and sigh. But sleep? Where hast thou gone? Why can't I sleep? It's the awful invasion of "Hoarders" houses still reverberating in my mind. I can't shake it. I think of my house and all its things. But that's not me! No, I'm not a hoarder! Well, I do have a lot, and I mean a lot of things in my little house. I didn't even mention the numerous little side tables I've bought to put those things on. The place is not bulging though. I can still walk through without dodging crates and cartons.

I get up, don my robe and slippers and go out to the living room. I turn on a few lamps and look around. The place could definitely stand a bit of picking up here and there, but no, it is not the ugly haphazard scene on the TV. Still, what can I do to undo a lot of this? What can I let go of? How can I make my home look plain and simple and uncluttered? I'm in a quandary. I force myself to pick up a book to read in order to think of something else. But no, the feeling of horror keeps coming back. I ask myself honestly, Do my children, family and friends think I'm a borderline case and see me as "poor Mom," or "poor Joyce?" Worse, will I never be able to go into another thrift shop and experience the joy of adopting some orphaned thing that has caught my heart strings?

I glance at my watch. 3:32 now. I turn back to the book. It's already tomorrow, the day that I so often promise myself to get at things. I can't start now though. I'd wake up the birds sleeping over in the kitchen if I tried to brew my morning cup of coffee. I go back to bed and snuggle in. I remember reading, (where was it, in the Bible?) "Tomorrow will take care of the things of itself." Well, it's not fully tomorrow yet, and it is quiet here in the dark. This time I'm able to slip into dreamland.

So, tomorrow is today now. I still have to do the things I have to do to erase that horrible show from my mind, but after breakfast I'm feeling better. I'll get dressed and tackle the essentials so that if someone comes into my house for the first time she will say, as so many others have said before, "Oh, what a lovely home you have!" Then I'll feel like myself again and not like one of those pitiful old women on TV they call the "Hoarders." The only thing I might have in common with them is white hair but mine is combed and fastened neatly. Also, I don't wear cotton dresses. I'll be careful to avoid that channel on TV in the future and I'll harden my heart a little bit more when I go to the next thrift shop. And when I move next time I'll exercise that other art of mine, the one that let's go without a whimper.