to save or to toss...
On two separate occasions today, I was privy to discussions on saving the artwork/projects of ones children. What do we save? do we save everything? does it start with the belly button stump and continue through every handprint, birthday project, mothers day collage, holiday commemoration and so on and so on? Are some of us collectors of everything tangible and others have the ability to retain the memory of all things precious and therefore can throw everything out? Yes. That is the answer. Some of us hoard and some of us dispose. Some of us will make it easy on our children when we die to sell the house and some of us will make it very, very, very difficult.
I loved my grandparents very much. My grandfather died in 1980 and my grandmother died in 1983. But, if I ever I find that I am missing them and need to really feel their presence, all I have to do is go to my parents sub-basement. It is there where I will find all of their boxes-from their apartment, from the apartment they lived in before that apartment...up until a few years ago, their mattress' were still in the sub-basement-I think you get the point. It seems someone, and I won't mention who, has some trouble letting go. And I guess it is ok because it doesn't interfere with the rest of the house, but everytime I enter the sub-basement, all I can think is "how I am going to clean this place up without her (again, not mentioning any names)knowing about it??" So there is one extreme.
The other extreme would be Ari's childhood home (which is no longer his home as it has been sold, knocked down and rebuilt...but not the point of this particular story.) Ari's mom(not mentioning any names) is not a collector..in fact, every time she would come to my house, she would leave me with things she thought i would "enjoy".....thank you notes from ari's bar mitzva, books from ari's ASHAR days, an assortment of knick-knacks that I never really knew what they were....it was all very sneaky, but extremely effective because when they relocated and moved out of the house, there wasn't that much left to pack up...
One of my kids asked me why purim is so close to pesach when you are supposed to be getting rid of food instead of collecting it-good question was what I answered him. I didn't really know the answer-what is the happy medium between being too sentimental and not sentimental enough (I am totally not saying you should be sentimental about all of the snickers you get-those you can send off to people at work, well if you work, if you don't work, you send them off with the person who works to give to the people at their work....yes, I know I should get a job...but, again, not the point of the story..)
The happy medium-I don't know what that is. I am trying to accomplish it by only holding on to mothers day projects-because everyone loves me on mother's day and I need all of the positive feedback I can get...though, in one of Jack's projects, he took the R in mother and wrote that I was like a rabbit..never quite got that one....but, not the point. There is no clear cut answer to this one, hold on to the things that make your heart warm and fuzzy and throw out the stuff that no one will notice...how is that?
another purim is over....my last purim in my 30's...oh boy..8 months from tomorrow....
Happy Sunday and have a great week
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