By Carl Heintze
In keeping with the national trend, at our house we're downsizing. This is no easy task. We've lived in the same house for 36 years. That means we've acquired a large collection of possessions. Some, of course, are valuable--for one, the antique secretary that once belonged to my grandfather and which is considered a family heirloom. But not much.
A lot is just plain junk. There is, for example, the cold-pack canner, a large granitized steel kettle, bought when we were young and economizing. We were going to can our own fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, although we had the equipment, we never had the necessary produce and so we never used it. But we've kept it all these years, intending to do so sometime for sure
Then there is a woman's bicycle, made in France, bought in a wild moment of abandon five years ago when we were going to exercise regularly. It's been ridden once. We also have a sort of surplus exercycle in the family room, intended for winter indoor bike riding while watching television.
It gets used once in a while, but mostly it gets moved from one place to another to get it out of the way.
There are two toasters, one of them a wedding present, neither of which we use any more, and half a room full of appliances gathering dust. Take, for example, the hamburger cooker, once the rage of appliance dealers. It cooks two hamburgers at a time, two pancakes at a time or two eggs at a time, but not much else. There's even a cookbook to go with it, acquired from a savings and loan in the days before the Resolution Trust Corporation when S&Ls gave away things like that to their depositors.
It hasn't been fired up for at least 20 years, but we still have it, just as we still have two crock pots, a gadget to make yogurt and an electric rotisserie.
I can't remember when the last two were used. I do remember that you had to have store-bought yogurt to make a starter for the yogurt maker. Somehow it always seemed simpler just to buy the yogurt at the store.
Those are samples of the really expendable items. But there also are a lot more that are much harder to toss out.
There's a vast clutter of pictures of ourselves, our children, our relatives, all at various ages. Some are framed, some aren't, some are in boxes, some are on the wall. Who could possibly care about them but ourselves?
We also have 20 boxes of slides taken on various vacations and journeys. I can't remember why we took some of these, although they look vaguely familiar. Even the familiar ones aren't worth much without my priceless narration, guaranteed to put guests to sleep, so we never show them anymore to anyone except ourselves. Sometimes they even put us to sleep. But I just hate to throw them away.
The worst are books. They cover approximately one wall. None is worth much to anyone except us, which is why it is so hard to get rid of any of them. For instance, there's a novel by one Robert Henriques, written during World War II. No one remembers Robert Henriques or the novel but me. It has a special sentimental attachment. It preceded my service in the war and it makes the war real again every time I read it.
There's half a dozen Bibles, too. I don't read them often, but I keep them because they were all given to us by someone.
The house is full of things like that: a tiny barrette used to clip my daughter's hair that I found in the yard--and which she can't recall (but I do); a collection of school papers my son dumped in a cardboard box in the garage junk room; my other daughter's old pharmacology text.
The latter makes me remember a big fight we had. I wanted her to take the pharmacology course to be a nurse; she didn't want to. She got the text but wouldn't take the course until she felt like it. The text is now sadly out of date and basically worthless, but I keep it anyway to remind me that that was her first flare of independence.
I know these things all ought to go, but somehow I just can't seem to get rid of them. They are the debris that accumulates with time and experience. Most are worthless or not worth very much or fit only for a garage sale or as salvage at a charity, but we find it very hard to part with them.
Still I think it's time to do so; it's time we thought of those who will have to winnow our treasures after we're gone. That time's coming, though I hope it isn't imminent.
It's a melancholy task, though, sifting through the years, marking past joys and old frustrations, happy times and those of stress, thinking of what was, but is no longer, what might have been, but now will not happen.
It's a time I've seen in the lives of others who have preceded us. I didn't look forward to it when they began it and I don't look forward to it now that I have to start. But I guess it's time.
Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, March 6, 1996.
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