You may be familiar with the old saying, "separating the wheat from the chaff," and since I love a good Biblical cliché, I can't resist trotting it out.
In this case, I'm talking about material possessions -- keeping what's valuable and tossing what isn't. Not that we don't all hold onto some really useless and worthless junk, myself included. But for some reason I've fixated on this concept when it comes to my family's stuff, with my mother, Peggy, being the gatekeeper and the ultimate arbiter of what stayed and what went at the Stanley compound.
And for years, she's been pulling a reverse wheat/chaff on me.
To wit, where's that fabulous Formica table from the '50s that I spy in some of our old photographs? "That old thing? We threw it out," she says. And what about some of those amazing Pucci-esque dresses you were wearing around that time? She shrugs. Gone. In the ether.
Instead, I've spent my entire life combing through thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales looking for vintage wares just like the ones she discarded. (Yes, I do love the thrill of the hunt and I have come up with some pretty sweet finds. But, hey, could she have saved me the trouble?)
Meanwhile, there's a closet in her basement stuffed full of my former homecoming, prom and bridesmaids dresses that for some unknown reason she hasn't set ablaze with the nearest Bic lighter. Why? I certainly would have by now, and Lord knows all that taffeta would burn in about 47 seconds.
Seriously, nobody goes to that many Halloween parties, needing that many hideous outfits to recreate Horrifying Looks of the '80s. So these garments are just taking up valuable space (extra, if they have crinoline. Yeah, I'm from the South).
I asked Peggy about the wheat/chaff switcheroo, and she was at a loss to explain why some things become part of the home landscape and others don't. It seemed like a good idea at the time to purge certain items, she said, and the mood hasn't struck her yet to dump the others.
In general, though, she's been on a mission to lighten the load at the home in Louisville, Ky., that she shares with my dad, for her own peace of mind. And so she doesn't end up on an episode of "Horders." She gathers boxes of clothes and books for donation every time the DAV calls; she puts canned goods in the drop boxes for poor families. An incredibly talented crafter, she's trying to use her tons of accumulated silk flowers to make arrangements as gifts.
My father, who's always been anti-clutter, runs lean and mean and told me recently that he didn't even have extra clothes lying around that he doesn't wear. "I think I'm standing in the middle of my entire wardrobe," he said, meaning the outfit on his back.
I've had stuff on the brain lately, and not just because it's spring, a time that many of us go through an annual top-to-bottom cleaning ritual. I've been thinking about the decades worth of stuff that my dear friend Mary has been sorting, labeling and winnowing with her mother, Patricia, who's about to move 3,000 miles to a new life and a new lifestyle.
As you know from reading this blog (and if you don't, scroll down and catch up), my buddy/former college roommate Mary and her sister Ruth have been chipping away at the mounds of belongings in Patricia's house, decades worth of accumulated paperwork, knickknacks, linens, furniture and tons more.
They've taken several trips from where we all live now in Los Angeles to Pat's place in our hometown, the Derby City. When the packing is finished (or kind of finished), Mary and Pat will drive across the country to Pat's new assisted-living apartment that's conveniently close to all of us.
By then, much of the wheat will have been separated from the chaff, a process that's a lot easier said than done, especially when Pat has tended to hold onto plenty of both. Example: She's kept everything from meal plan tickets from Mary's college days to letters from her war veteran husband. Trash and treasure, side by side.
At least she won't have the time or latitude to follow in my mom's footsteps -- no reverse wheat/chaff for her -- so I can be assured of maybe only one thing from this journey: She and Mary will not arrive in Burbank with a trunk full of fuchsia hoop skirts.
-- T.L. Stanley
