Stuff
All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes
My family and I are in that peculiar, protracted state of liminal anxiety that is moving. And it is Pioneer Day.
This is the first move that my children are old enough to remember and participate in. I have not yet decided whether it is worse to move with 3 children under 4, including a newly crawling baby, or with a mildly obsessive-compulsive 10-year-old, a sentimental and extremely emotionally aware 8-year-old, and a hyperactive six-year-old who really, really, really wants to learn to read RIGHT NOW, and has taken to spelling (in his painstaking, idiosyncratic–he doesn’t know vowels yet–way) everything he wants to say. ALL THE TIME. I would gladly wish either one as a form of torture on my worst enemy (if I had one).
What is lovely about moving with children, though, is getting a glimpse into the enchanted world they inhabit. Every scrap of paper, every saved rock or bit of beach glass, every obnoxious plastic toy from a vending machine (can we go back to gum, PLEASE!), brims with meaning for them. I see junk; they see people they love, feelings they want to keep, the myriad accomplishments of growing up. “This rock is from the time we went to the beach with cousin Quin.” “That’s the shopping list from when I went to the store with Opa, and he let me push the cart the whole time.” “That’s the very first time I remembered to draw smoke coming from the chimney.” “No, Mom, I really NEED to keep all those Sacrament Meeting programs [every single one for the last 4 years was in a box under his bed], because they remind me of people who have moved away, and whenever I don’t want to go to church, I remember that I want to collect the program.” “This is my napkin from the time I got to go to a fancy restaurant with Daddy, all by myself, because I kept my room clean for a whole month.” (Fortunately, it was not a restaurant too fancy for paper napkins.) “This is the ticket from the Red Sox game I saw with Dad.” And, there is carefully taped to the wall and labeled in careful third-grade cursive, “a piece of Net from Cameron Stadium on West Campus at Duke University,” saved from a trip to daddy’s college reunion.
As most over-educated parents nowadays would, I watch them for signs that they are experiencing or repressing trauma or sadness or, at the very least, deep resistance to uncertainty and change. But, contrary to what the pop-psych parenting literature led me to expect, they seem to be doing fine, except for putting up a healthy resistance to being asked to help with cleaning the old house. They cheerfully arrange the physical remains of their former life in their new bedrooms–the objects, for now, at least, large enough to hold their stores of memory and the fullness of their many loves.
I wish it were so for me. The detritus of my past seems leaky, somehow. Meaning and memory and emotion spill out of the quotidian objects and threaten to drown me. I cry on dishtowels, sheets, into pitchers. Moving is not hard because we modern materialists have too much stuff (although we surely do!); it is difficult because that stuff is freighted with meaning. While some of our memory and feeling make it into words, as Kaimi suggests, not all of it does. Our possessions remain possessed, carriers of the excess of information, of feeling, of angst and the residue of God’s creative work which we can never quite destroy. (See St. GMH)
I keep remembering the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum in Salt Lake City. It is a wonderful, if completely overwhelming, collection of stuff–beautiful heirlooms and gawdy trinkets alike, room after roomful of hope and homesickness, love and despair, grief and longing, and faith. Across time, I see some other mother, sorting, giving away, leaving behind the things that made her old life, trusting herself and her God to make a new one, but tucking a piece of jewelry, a teacup, a lock of hair into the corner of the trunk–knowing, as children and those who tend them do, that the world is shot through with magic, that things are so much more than what they seem.
Things, matter, stuff–clutter, treasure, art. The works of God transformed by human labor and use and love. Glory everywhere.
Great post, but my favorite part is the fourth paragraph with all of the specific examples–that really drove the point home for me.
Comment by Kevin Barney — July 24, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
Great post. Thanks. I hope you get through your move with as little stress as possible. It’s a difficult thing to do, moreso with children. Good luck.
Comment by john f. — July 24, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
Uh oh, I must have impure eyes, because all I see is huge piles of stuff to get rid of.
The goodwill store where we live offers pickup service. I dream of calling for an appointment and telling them, after they arrive, to just take everything, right down to the bare walls.
Comment by Mark IV — July 24, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
Thanks, Kris. A beautiful post. I still have an amethyst bolo tie my grandfather gave me. As odd as it looks, and as much as I would never wear a bolo tie, there it sits on the shelf above my desk.
Comment by Sam MB — July 24, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
Just hold on! When they become teenagers, they will break all your stuff. When they marry, they will come and take all your stuff!
Comment by Bob — July 24, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Kristine, I have been married to a packrat for 20 years. Mentally, I accepted the gradual build-up of her “stuff” years ago, but I had an epiphany as I read your post. I need to thank you for that, truly and deeply.
I have had a hard time emotionally letting go completely of my own lack of need for “stuff” and truly accepting my wife’s stuff as being an actual part of her. I knew she holds onto things for the memories they provide, but I had not classified those memories as being an actual part of her. I have to tell you, for the first time in over 20 years, I looked around at her stuff and didn’t feel any inclination at all to cull out the oldest items or build a big bonfire or buy a huge trash can. I hope that understanding is permanent, but I thank you for the insight now.
Comment by Ray — July 24, 2007 @ 9:30 pm
My wife and I are in the middle of moving ourselves, and also find ourselves surrounded by boxes. I catch myself getting frustrated, because nearly none of it is mine. As we finished packing the old house up, I labeled some boxes as “stuff,” because to me, that is all it was. This helps me remember that, what is often just stuff to me can be memories to my wife.
Comment by CS Eric — July 25, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
Kristine, I bet you are just the coolest mom ever. I always forget to look at those rocks as the meaningful objects they are and just itch to throw them out when the kid’s backs are turned. I miss so many opportunities to enjoy the magic of my children’s lives.
Comment by fMhLisa — July 25, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
Ray, Eric, it’s funny that it’s your wives who keep things–in our house, I’m the one who would love to fill a dumpster once a year. I’m glad if I’ve eased a point of friction for you. And, Eric, even if it is stuff full of meaning, it’s still a pain in the patoot to move it all!!
Lisa, my kids would tell you I’m not at all cool (”Mo-ommmm, all the other moms listen to rock and roll in the car…”) and I’m still very tempted to throw their stuff away when they’re not looking. In fact, I do throw out quite a lot of my daughter’s stuff, because I’ve found from observing her that her attachments are generally less fierce than her brother’s. I think it may be partly because she is so much more verbal–she tells the stories that are important to her over and over (and over and over…), while my taciturn firstborn doesn’t have the stories saved up. He remembers by touching.
Comment by Kristine — July 25, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
Thanks for this, Kris. It evokes a conversation I’ve had with M. many times over the years. I like to hold on to things. Memories, reminders. I’m really not all that good at remembering, and my journaling is spotty. And so I hold on to reminders.
“That stuff is freighted with meaning . . . Our possessions remain possessed.”
I like that. And it’s kind of fun to think of my old school books, or pictures, or stacks of kids’ drawings, as being possessed.
Comment by Kaimi — July 25, 2007 @ 5:39 pm
I’m definitely not the packrat type, but I do have a box in the pantry labeled “Kevin’s Memories,” which has odds and ends from my childhood. I must admit, on the rare occasions I pull it out and handle the items, the memories come rushing back in a flood.
Comment by Kevin Barney — July 25, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
Wow. I just read this post for the first time. Sorry I missed it before Kristine, it really is beautifully written. It brings back so many memories of moving as a child and sorting through boxes of “stuff” and experiencing all over again each memory that filled us as we pulled something else out of a drawer or a closet. I loved the poem too. And cousin Quin? I knew we were related somehow!
Comment by MCQ — August 19, 2007 @ 2:50 am