The urge to purge comes upon me every so often; especially when I need to lay my hands on something I haven’t picked up in a long while for some urgent reason and can’t find it anywhere. Yes, it’s trendy now to be organized; to live lightly and simply and “tiny,” but that is so not me. My house is my treasure box, its shelves and cupboards and crannies filled with the jewels of memories of people I’ve loved, places I’ve been, and experiences I’ve had. Like a magpie or a bowerbird, I’ve filled my nest with sparklies and shinies that may not be worth much in anyone else’s market, but that enrich my life with the joy of remembrance and the sensory fulfillment of surrounding myself with magical and beautiful things. Even if I can’t find what I’m looking for at the moment, I can always find something.
Because I have always been part of a family and tribe, my nest is also filled with other people’s things, “touring exhibitions” in the museum of my life. Even though all my kids are grown and have moved out for lives on their own, my garage is still a warren of boxes marked with their names, filled with childhood memories and the rest of the good stuff they will move into their own basements, attics, garages, or storage units someday. It’s karma, I know. A goodly portion of my worldly goods lived with my parents until my sister, cleaning out the family home, was finally forced to chuck the stuff out. Mind you, none of it has ever been mindless junk. We don’t hoard in this family. We preserve. There is a difference.
There is also apparently a psychology behind our need to collect things, whether it be the thrill of the hunt and the ultimate fulfillment of finally bringing down one’s prey (that rarest of rare stamps, that elusive vintage Elvis bobble head, that final button from the Presidential campaign of 1936) or the comfort we feel when we are surrounded by the safe and familiar. Some psychologists cite our need to feel godlike in creating and controlling order in a clearly defined mini-universe when we collect things, although one look at the collections in my garage will make it clear to you that we’re really not into that control thing at all. The universe I live in is unruly, happy chaos. At last count, there were probably two dozen or more “collections” out there, taking up the space that should be occupied by, say, a car: ceramic pigs, marbles, postcards, stamps, coins, rocks, shells, Christmas ornaments, tins, baskets, board games, puzzles, nutcrackers, dolls, pop culture figurines, vintage sheet music—you name it, the Daniel clan has collected it; all this on top of the usual books, movies, music, and photo albums most families have lurking about in some quantity or another.
Some experts say that creating a collection fulfills our existential need to leave something of ourselves behind in this world when we go, a ghost of our identity that will live on as long as our children and grandchildren or the grateful citizens of our community or nation care to keep whatever it is we leave them. That may be true, but I have to say that once you’ve experienced an evacuation ahead of a devastating forest fire, flood, or tornado, you become aware, with crystalline clarity, that if stuff is all you leave to be remembered by, you can be erased from history’s memory in a flash. At that moment of truth, when you have only minutes to determine what you can throw in your pocket or your suitcase or your car, it becomes very clear that your life, and the lives of those you love, are really the only existential things that matter. All the real “collections” are in our heads and our hearts any way. You never need a suitcase or a wheelbarrow (or a garage) for those.
Pockets Full of Miracles 