I have a bit of a confession to make. It should have been made long ago, of course,
but now seems better than never.
I am a compulsive procrastinator.
This is a problem, and one that often dooms my best
intentions. A New Year's resolution may
be recycled as a sacrifice at Lent. My Halloween
pumpkin doubles as Thanksgiving decor. There
is no 12-step program for people like me: we have Step 1. That is followed by a
hodge-podge, slow-motion middle finished by a desperate eleventh-hour dash by
which we hope to land at The End just before the last bell rings.
I have been given many explanations for this flaw, from fear
of failure to fear of success and
beyond. Any one of these may be valid to some degree. But it can also be argued
that my head is often in the sand to avoid dealing with my environment: most
notably, of late, my house and the myriad bits of Stuff that still inhabit it.
Let me back up a moment. If I had to pick between a house
full of knick-knacks and the simplicity of a monastic cell, I'd be in the
monk-eviction business. My late husband,
on the other hand, liked Stuff.
In fact, not one week after we married, he walked around the
house shaking his head and finally asked, "Why don't you have
Stuff?"
He then set about remedying the situation as he saw it. John loved estate sales, antique shops and
flea markets. He was also a generosity hoarder.
By this I mean that the driving force behind the piles of Stuff he liked
to keep was the deep-seated certainty that Someday we - or someone we knew or
might yet meet - would be in dire need of that thingamajig. Our
garage/attic/pantry/closets became a testament to John's desire to be ready
with just the right doohickey when Someday came a-knockin'.
At the time he passed away, our garage was so full of things
picked up at one sale or another (often with the express purpose of giving it
to someone), that there was a single-file path from the house door to the
garage door and not an inch to spare on either side.
At first, I did very little.
It was his pile of Stuff.
Eventually, when I figured out how to live with missing him, I began sporadic attacks. I would pull out a basket, crate or bag and
ponder the contents. If I could figure
out the intended recipient, I made a delivery.
If it seemed like a contingency doohickey, I made a trip to Goodwill or
listed it on Freecycle. Over the years,
I have whittled it down to where I can park the car in the garage and still
have a little wiggle-room.
This is not to my credit.
It should have taken a matter of weeks and it is a two-car garage.
Recently, as I renewed the sorting and pondering, I came
across one item that I did remember. It
is a small wall plaque made of wood and dedicated to the Winnsboro High School Class
of 1917. On the front are two small pieces
cut from teachers' chalkboards. John had
picked it up at an estate sale, intending to send it to the Winnsboro school
district as a memento of their past.
Curious, I did a little research. In a history of Winnsboro (published the same
year John was born) I read about their turn-of-last-century efforts to bring in
telephone service and build a library through a Carnegie grant. East Texas at that time was highly
segregated. Women were barely beginning to find new horizons. Then came 1917. My late father-in-law was
born. Two counties over, someone cut out pieces of blackboard to celebrate a graduating
class. And America joined a war that spanned the globe.
I wondered who of that class went to war. And who came back?
That little plaque is sitting in an envelope on my
desk. I'll take it to the post office
tomorrow and ship it off to the Winnsboro school district. It will be one less
piece of Stuff with which to deal.
But in some sort of cosmic swap, the ghosts of stories not
yet told remain and they have led me to a conclusion. These little bits of
history that come with the Stuff, the stories that lurk in the corners of every
day, they're the real reason I find myself constantly in that last-minute sprint
for the finish line.
It seems like a possibility I should at least explore. Someday.
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