If you are a hoarder of paper memories, I would love to hear from you. If you have boxes and files of old cards, notes, plane tickets and movie stubs–waiting amidst the rubble of your disorganized life for you to find the time to glue them into their proper scrapbooks— please let me know you are out there so I don’t feel like I am stuck in this mess all by myself.

I seethe with envy when I go to my friends’ houses and see sparkling, uncluttered counter tops. I secretly look for their “pile of papers”– checking under the sink in the bathroom, sneaking a peak in a closet when no one is looking–but alas, no paper piles fall on my head.

They must be very unpopular, I think, for their desks and counters look like they have never received an invitation or any of the catalogues that I am gifted with daily.  Don’t they have any bills? Or, are they so computer efficient that they do it all “online?” Are they not inundated with requests from the dozens of charities that tug at my heart and mind every month? Aren’t they haunted by the fear of contracting any disease whose appeal for donations they ignore? Who are these perfect people? And do they actually follow the rule: “Only touch a piece of mail once: throw, file or do?”

If they do do, how do they make those decisions so quickly? I start a new “to do” file every month; either because A), I have lost the previous one, or B) It was overflowing its folder.

I am looking around me at the stacks: old post cards–empty ones from favorite trips that I know I will send to someone or put in my scrapbook; a video that says “Caroline’s Birthday” on it, with no date (will have to watch it to see which year it was so I can file it properly); a box of ’80s CDs that I found in my son’s closet and couldn’t part with because I want to download them on I-Tunes–that is after I go take an Apple Course on downloading which is something I will put off as long as possible because the Apple Store makes me so anxious I can only go in there after I have taken several pills which I really don’t like taking as they mix poorly with alcohol.

My bulletin board is stuffed with family pictures–I even have the Obama family picture on it so when people visit they think we are old friends. There are invitations to events I attended long ago, but think are pretty so I keep them up to admire. Also invitations to events I said I was going to attend and didn’t–thus a reminder to write an apology note; coupons for flowers, books, gift certificates from 2010; coupons for free meals if I go listen to someone talking about senior living; Social Security information that I can’t access because I don’t remember the answers to the private questions about my life that they ask; loose photos of my children from 15 years ago; a broken fan; registration for a class on “Organizing your Life in Six Short Weeks–which started three weeks ago, but I am hoping to be a quick learner in half the time;  my old calendar from last year that I may need to refer to should I attend a trivia night and there is a question like: what day did February 12th fall on last year?;  a box with my dog’s ashes–he passed away when we were in the throes of wedding woes, planning my daughter’s wedding.  I do intend to bury his ashes under a large stone that just arrived inscribed: Murray, Wagging all the Way Down” which was how my son described his sad but “upbeat” departure from this world. He used to sit in this office, right under my feet while I was typing. So, having his ashes right next to my computer is somewhat comforting–even though neatniks may think it untidy.

I have purchased more than the average number of books on organization—and read at least half of them–but never seem to be able to find one when I need it. I know they are here somewhere–but more important memorabilia has surfaced and drowned them out.

I was considering another class that may help me choose what is worthy of keeping. It’s called, “Trash or Treasure….” but ironically,,,,it is full. So there must be some people out there like me who need help.  To assuage my self-doubt, I repeat daily: I am good enough, I am smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me” -even if I am messy.  But no matter how much I repeat this mantra, I still can’t throw away a receipt from a restaurant where I had lunch with my grandchildren when they were in town two weeks ago because I think they will like to know someday that Grandma took them to lunch. This could be important family history. Let’s say I am gone–in heaven I hope–and they are visiting St. Louis in later years.

Suddenly they find themselves at a restaurant (yes, it still exists), and because they often peruse the many Scrapbooks that I left for them, one will say: “Gee, didn’t we have lunch with Grandma here when we were four and six?” And the other will quickly respond, “Yes, I just saw the receipt last night in Grandma’s Memory Book #52!”  Imagine how much richer this will make their adult lives!

I have no receipts from–nor even pictures of–my Grandma.  I would give at least one of the boxes of paper treasures in my house to have a letter or card from her, and even though we didn’t go to restaurants back then, it would be fun to have the grocery receipt from a dinner she cooked. (I even sometimes save grocery receipts–if it is for something special like the first meal I have cooked for my family in 6 months.)

It is fun to dig a purse out of the back of my closet and find a receipt from a New York restaurant in 2011. Then I know when I last used the purse, and when I happened to make a trip there–and it brings back all kinds of wonderful memories of whom I was with in New York. For example, my daughter, who has lived there for over ten years and who often says to me: “Mom, get a grip, we don’t need any of that stuff you are saving. Get a life.”  I smile at her sense of humor, and realize that she is young and doesn’t realize the value of history.

Are there other family historians out there who feel this primal need to save? A need that is so deep, so entrenched in the very fiber of your being that when you are trying to clean out your basement, you can’t throw away old margarine containers with dried up watercolor paints, and the brittle paint brushes that your children used to paint all those artistic treasures that fill the many dress and shoe boxes in each of their closets?  Yes, I have all that–and when I look at the rounded margarine tubs, with their yellow corn cobs dancing merrily all around them, I think: this will be worth something someday: they don’t make them like this anymore. And, I am sure my grandchildren will thrill to be able to put water in the same plastic tub that their mother used.  So, after thinking about it, and reminiscing over the past, complete with seeing my children painting in this basement and hearing their sweet little voices fighting over the color red, I realize the day has gone by and I am no closer to diminishing the clutter that surrounds me.

Saved by the bell!  Ironically it is Goodwill calling and asking if I have anything to donate.  I pause for a moment, wistfully take in the dusty treasures surrounding, and answer, “No, sorry, nothing right now.”

Thinking of downsizing. Cleaning out closets. Stumped. Slumped. Sleepy. Slowly I sift through archaic letters written to me by my oldest daughter during her first week in college. It’s not that fifteen years classifies them as relics, but, who writes a letter anymore?  And in cursive no less? The envelope says it all—addressed not only to my husband and me, but to all four of her siblings–who have not been at this address for several years now. What is this tugging at my center, this prickly feeling behind my eyes? I hear shouts and giggles and door slams throughout my shell of a house, sounds that echo off the walls because I refuse to repaint or paper them for fear of silencing their five voices. Their teen heart throb posters are curled at the edges, their bulletin boards still crammed with yellowed reminders of play practice, homework assignments, and “Vote for Bob, He’ll do the job!” And do the job he did. He continues to be an efficient class president to this day,  just having organized his 15- year class reunion.

Our second daughter recently married, so I started going through her room to see if I could siphon through notebooks and hockey knee pads, to make room in her closet for her new husband’s things when they come to visit.  In rifling through the mass of memorabilia, I accidentally knocked over a hockey stick–which was a “watershed” moment for me in the truest sense. My tears started streaming, and I slid on them down my steps and swam through them into my kitchen.. They spilled over memories of her toddling behind me on the first day in this strange house, crying as as she reached her chubby little arms above her head, pleading, “Uppy, uppy Mommy,” for me to pick her up, to one of her last days as a high school student when she twirled through the door, short skirt swinging at her lanky, scarred knees, and slammed her hockey stick and fifty pound back-pack on the kitchen table. “Hi, Mom, gotta run up and change for play practice” she shouted as she quickly brushed her lips to my cheek.  ”Alison,” I jerked away, “will you please take that damn hockey stick off our dinner table?” “Sor-reeee”  she cried as she came stomping back to collect the offensive stick, giving me a haughty stare as she turned to run upstairs.   I remember cringing with guilt at the time, thinking, “Why am I making such a big fuss out of this?” Then, just a couple of months later, the answer came to me. I had to let her go– half-way across the country, in upstate New York, to fend for herself at college. When I returned home, the kitchen table haunted me without its familiar detritus of sports equipment and backpacks. I hated to look at it. I hated her absent plate at the table. I hated even more the silence–not hearing her voice chatting away about her latest field or stage victory.  She has recently married, and as much as I relished her joy at the most amazing wedding of a lifetime, and though I love my new son-in-law,  I feel sorrow when I walk into her empty room, and I curse the clean kitchen table that remains forever void of her hockey stick and backpack.

As I helped her on with her veil, I gasped at the sight of this beautiful, full-grown woman in front of me in all her glorious elegance. But my heart saw the young girl twirling in her hockey skirt,—the little girl I had to let go— as she leaned in to give me a kiss on my wet cheek.

HI friends,

Let’s try this again. I haven’t blogged since my first entry six months ago because I have been in the throes of wedding planning for my daughter. Speaking of going overboard, it’s just a simple little wedding Italy with a moveable feast 5 days long for one-hundred and fifty guests. No stress. Just have to organize getting 20 family members there including three grand-children five and under and a nanny.  The simple wedding starts with a big party in Florence on the 27th of August, and culminates in the wedding in an Abbey in Portofino on August 312st, (La Cervara in case you want to look up this “quaint” 14C. medieval marvel that resembles a miniature Versailles.) No, my future son-in-law is NOT Italian. We had the poor foresight to send our daughter to Florence for a semester while in college at Cornell–and after that all h—broke out. She fell in love not IN Florence, but WITH  Florence.  Since then, her intended–seen in picture with the “Bride-to-Be” above overlooking Portofino– not sure if he could “seal the deal”

desperately flew her to her “fasvorite place in the world”  to propose in the Miceleangelo gardgens–complete with photographers stationed in the bushes to capture the special moment–Thank goodness for him she said “YES. and we were thrilled to be there 3 weeks later for a biking trip in Tuscany with the whole family–when Mom (moi) made one of her totatally overboard remarks like” “Gee, maybe you could start the celebrations in Florence, and then move to Portofino for a wedding by the sea,” and she promplty obliged–much to the chagrin of my husband–the now beleagered and broke “Father of the Bride.”

So, what I was really writing you about is a poem I want to share. I wrote it in a writing class and the exercise was to write a Villanelle, a short poem of fixed form, French in origin–a style used by Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, and the famous suicidal poetess, Sylvia Plath who chronicles the last days of her depression, somewhat humorously, in the classic, The Bell Jar (in which I feel I am living right at this moment.)

So, since I feel I am adrift in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea which glistens so beautifully as it hugs the craggy rock cliffs of Portofino as it blinds my eyes while I am clinging to my  Mother-of the Bride life raft in search of the perfect dress to make me look fifteen years younger and ten pounds thinnner, all while trying not to cross my daughter who insists that I wear beige.–Isn’t that for the Groom’s Mother? (I had opted for something more suited to my complexion–a pretty peach–but her royal highness dubbed it “Too orange” saying “If you wear that i will NOT let you be in the wedding pictures.” (Anyone else out there have a “Bridezilla” on their hands?) I titled my poem: ADRIFT.  It’s a fun play on words of the French language–which I speak–although not perfectly–as often as possilbe either in my French classes at the Alliance Francaise, or to my French friends, or in mumblings aloud to myself…which are happening all the more often these days.

NOTE: IN THE FRENCH EXPRESSION, “ A LA DERIVE”, DERIVE IS PRONOUNCED: DUH-REEVE. ‘ETOURDIE IS PROUNOUNCED: A (like HAY)-TOUR-DEE

ADRIFT

I LOVE THE WAY THE FRENCH ARE SO ADEPT AT TAKING LEAVE,
FROM DINNERS THAT LINGER LONGER, AND GUESTS WHO DRONE AND BORE,
BUT MOST OF ALL I LOVE THEIR LANGUAGE THAT DESCRIBES ME “A LA DERIVE.”

ALTHOUGH WITH THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION I FEEL NOT VERY KEEN:
“AIMLESS, ADRIFT AND WANDERING IN A KIND OF SLUGGISH FOG,”
I LOVE THE WAY THE FRENCH ARE ALWAYS SWIFT AT TAKING LEAVE.

NO EXCUSES TO THE HOSTESS, BUT TO THEMSELVES THEY ALWAYS CLEAVE,
TRUSTING THAT IT’S TIME TO GO, AND NOT CARING WHAT OTHERS THINK.
I LOVE THE FRENCH WHO BELIEVE MY A-D-D IS “A LA DERIVE.”

FLITTING FROM TASK TO TASK I OFTEN FIND IT HARD TO BREATHE.
STARTING NEW PROJECTS IS A JOY; THE THRILL OF FINISHING I KNOW NOT.
I LOVE THE WAY THE FRENCH WOULD,” JE NE SAIS QUOI,” JUST TAKE LEAVE.

“SCATTERBRAIN, FEATHERHEAD ETOURDIE,” MY TEACHER RAILED AT ME.
MOM SAID, “DON’T MIND THOSE NUNS. THEY’RE ‘FRUSTRATED, OLD AND MEAN.’”
SO I CLING TO THE SECULAR FRENCH DESCRIPTION OF ME: “A LA DERIVE.”

IN DREAMS I AM ORGANIZED, A STAGE STAR, TALKING TO FANS ON TWITTER.
AWAKE, I WADE THROUGH MESSY CLOSETS AND CURSE AT THE COMPUTER.
MY FRENCH FRIENDS ARE LAISSEZ-FAIRE AND ADEPT AT TAKING LEAVE,
AND HAVE THE GENTILESSE OF DUBBING MY DRIFTING, “A LA DERIVE.

**Ironic note:  the French equivalent of “to take French leave” (to skip out unannounced)

is “filer a l’anglaise”–which literally means: to run off like the English do!!  A bientot! Nancy

On this first post I am testing the waters to see if there are others out there who feel adrift in their lives as I often do: the empty nesters whose umbilical cords–although severed long ago–seem to be feeling the stretch to New York or Japan or wherever their progeny may have landed; or, the divorced woman or man who knows he or she is happier alone than with their former mate, but whose loneliness begins a circle of floating in and out of “Did I make the right decision?” Then there is the happily married mother with healthy children who feels so helpless as she wades through her days of feeding, changing, scolding, teaching and driving, that she barely has a moment to shower, much less take the much touted “time for herself” that all the glossy magazine covers tell her SHE CAN’T BE HAPPY WITHOUT. She doesn’t even have to buy the magazines, but they shout at her from the end table as she holds her screaming infant in the pediatrician’s office in one arm, while wiping her toddler’s hands with sanitary wipes in the other–after he has already touched every car on the train board that the coughing child with the runny nose has sucked on first.
But, there are bright sides to this, too. Empty nesters do have more time to nurture their relationships–sans adolescent interrupt-us. The divorcee will eventually find that there is a serenity in being alone–which comes from a tidier kitchen and from not having to pick up dirty underwear off the bedroom floor. And, the young mother’s children WILL GROW UP, presenting teenage problems that will make her long for the simpler days of diapers. Her thoughts will turn from dread of having to drive them, to dread of having them drive!
So, if any of you out their in cyberland are having any of these sinking feelings, maybe these words by Henry Ford will help drive you to higher ground: “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
Happier Days to you!
Nancy