Every year, as the days grow longer and the first tender green shoots of daffodils pop from the ground, I emerge from my winter hibernation filled with enthusiasm, good intentions, and the hope of spring. I dust off my New Year’s resolutions truly ready to start a new year. Invigorated, I am ready to knock off the pounds I packed on over the winter, try a new hair style, purge myself of bad habits, and organize my life, starting with my closets because…I am a pack rat.
This is not an apology, nor is it a confession. It’s who I am. Being a pack rat is as much a part of me as my fragrance of over 30 years (Pheromone), choice in music (opera, reggae, Bob Seger and Jimmy Buffet), love of college basketball, penchant for bawdy jokes, and occasional use of spicy language.
In my early 30’s I searched for perfection and tried to change those parts of me I thought weren’t good enough or weren’t “normal.” During a session with my psychotherapist, as I was berating myself, she said, “Say something positive about yourself.” I thought for a moment and answered, “Well, I’m not boring.” She laughed and replied, “How many people can say that?”
Thus began my acceptance of who I am. Shy and retiring? No way. I laugh loud and have strong opinions. I couldn’t be a lyric soprano, but I sang bass harmony with the Melodeers, the world’s best Sweet Adelines Chorus, and I have three International Championship medals to prove it! I’m not an athlete, but my personal best came on a hot July afternoon when I walked a mile straight down to Oregon’s Crater Lake, and the mile back up, to fulfill a childhood dream.
And, I save stuff. I’m a pack rat. It’s in my genes. Like Popeye, I love spinach and, “I yam what I yam.”
When I brought my future husband to meet my parents, he couldn’t get over the three- and five-year-old Readers Digest and Time magazines in the living room, bedroom, and bathroom. On a visit to my favorite aunt in California, there, by the bedside, were copies of six-year-old National Geographics. My tidy, organized new husband found it odd, but I didn’t. To me it was normal. A Fibber McGee’s closet, the kind that is opened with trepidation because stuff comes flying out…didn’t everyone have one? My parents did, so did my aunts and cousins. And yes, I have one, too.
Time and over 30 years of marriage to Don have changed me, including my pack rat ways. I no longer save magazines, but I do save the cards Don and I give each other. They’re the funny, romantic story of our life together. A friend convinced me to finally get rid of my old clothes, which was hard. I thought, “I’ll be a size 8 again.” She made me realize 1) I probably won’t; 2) if I do, they’ll be out of style, and 3) if I am a size 8 again, wouldn’t I like to reward myself with a new wardrobe? So I purged my closet, emptied boxes and suitcases of clothes I couldn’t wear, and gave them away—except for a few things. I kept my wedding dress, naturally, but I also have the dress I was wearing the night I met my husband, the beautiful suit he gave me our first Christmas together, and a bright yellow bikini I once looked so hot in.
There are some things I absolutely cannot part with, like the empty tube of lipstick I wore on my wedding day, and newspaper clippings, including a review of a play I was in calling me “a comic delight,” and a Chicago gossip column autographed by my teenage heart throb, recounting our embarrassing chance meeting when I was in my 30’s. In my Bible is a drawing with a get-well wish from my sister, Ida, when she was 6. And I cannot part with toys from my childhood—Pandy the Panda bear with one eye and once-white fur now grey and worn, and Lola May, the rag doll with yarn hair and embroidered face, my mother made.
Every year, when we put up our Christmas tree, Don and I go through the same ritual. He asks, “Do we have to put up all the ornaments?” And I give him a look that says, “Of course!” As we trim the tree he will pick up an ornament and ask, “Where did this come from?” I always remember, and we begin a stroll down memory lane recalling a friend, a trip we took, a Christmas past. There are the ornaments we give each other every year, a candy cane reindeer with pipe cleaner antlers my mother made, a handmade ornament from a favorite cousin who is now a grown man, an ornament from a friend who died suddenly and too young, and all those ornaments from our travels.
When my California aunt died, I helped my cousins clean her house. As we emptied drawers and her “Fibber McGee Closet,” I wondered, “Why? Why did you save this, Thelma?” But as we sorted through what she had saved in her 85+ years I understood what was important to her, and with that knowledge came a new love and appreciation of her and her amazing life.
Don and I have no children, so I often think of my nieces who will be left to clean my closets and dresser drawers when I am gone. I think they will appreciate my collection of dolls from our travels, Depression glass, and Wedgewood Christmas ornaments, but what about my scarves and broaches? When they find the Toulouse-Lautrec scarf I brought back from Paris, will they remember he was my favorite artist? I can hear one of the girls say, “What’s with all the lady bug and bee pins?” Will they recall my fascination with bees or their uncle calling me “Lady Bug?” When they find my silver frog broach, I hope they think of the times I told them, when they had a broken heart, “You’ve gotta kiss a lot of frogs.”
The ancient Egyptians had it right. They took their stuff to the after life in pyramids and tombs. Although I have to leave my stuff behind, there are some things I want to take with me. So, when I arrive at the Pearly Gates, I’ll be arriving with Pandy and Lola May, wearing the three championship medals from my days singing with the Melodeers, and in my bag will be the drawing from Ida, the “Tartuffe” review, Frankie Avalon’s autograph, a sweet love note from Don, and the dress I wore when I met him. Oh, yes, and the tube of lipstick from our wedding day. M! April/May 2014
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