Hints of a Future Problem

Mother loves this story. She so amused telling it. She's giddy, I cringe.

Long before I was born, in a galaxy I imagine far far away, a company moved my family 480 miles to another state. The trip was paid for by her second husband's employer, in an age when employers did such things for valuable employees. 

Mom was not unaccustomed to major moves. She'd already moved across state lines with 3 kids. I think she was unaccustomed to having help. I suspect taking ALL her things with her was also a novelty. 

Her new husband, a brilliant engineer working in cutting edge stuff, was given a job in another state. The big national moving company assured Mom they would come assess the needs of the move, schedule the move, and (on the day scheduled) pack everything into boxes & into a truck. The movers would travel to the new location and unpack everything. She wouldn't have to do a thing.

The scheduler came, stolled through the house, made a few notes, and scheduled the move. 

Moving day arrived. The truck pulled up. Movers pulled out their supplies and got to work. 

They packed and packed. 

They packed some more.

They kept opening doors and finding new stuff. Stuff within stuff. The movers got the truck half loaded before they realized they grossly underestimated the contents of the house. 

You see, my mother is very good at taking up every niche in the house. Every inch. There was a brief time after I was born that I remember the house very well decorated. It might have been full, but you couldn't see it. It was after that critical mass happened, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

The movers had to call for extra help, extra supplies, and another truck. The movers only allotted half a truck for a house of 5 in the early 1960s. That seems highly unreasonable now, but in 1960 it was probably standard. The Mid-century modern minimalist style was in vogue. 

I have no idea how many movers there were or how long it took. I'm sure Mom mentioned it. I imagine an ant colony moving the entire nest. The point is it was excessive and she revels in it, like Scarlet in drapes. 

The move eventually completed. The house they moved into was larger. It was a beautiful new home in a beautiful community. I saw it several years ago. It's still really a nice area.

The move was a warning sign of what was to come. Without a 1960's Kondo or Döstädning (Swedish death cleaning) book to curb the accumulation of things things took over Mom's life, her kids' lives, and now her grandkids lives. Rockefeller and Kennedy passed on businesses to their kids. My mother passed on dreaded boxes full of newspaper clippings, screws, and rocks. 

My brother and I were talking recently about Mom's transition into full on consumerism. He says he remembers Mom just buying, and buying, and buying. He remembers the mass accumulation of books. When he was little they didn't have books in the house. They went to the library. By the time I came along (4 moves and a new husband later) Mom was building walls and walls of bookshelves into a tiny 2 bedroom. 

She was reading so many books from the Readers Digest collection that I remember her hiding the packages from Dad. I don't know why. He was reading the books right after she was done with them. 

By that time the semi-trailer was sitting in the yard, filled with 20 years and a first family of accumulation. 

I look at my own house and worry. I'm divorced and downsized. I used to revel in living out of my car in a weekend warrior sort of way, jumping between college and outdoors. Now I'm raising a kid in an environment not unlike my own childhood. 

I keep telling myself this stuff isn't staying here. I'm just a layover between Mom and its final destination. The reality is some of this stuff has hopped 4 states through an uncounted number of moves. 

My own emergency prepardness training pushes me to save things most people my age would never consider owning. Who needs a 50 year old juicer, a canning kettle, and jars when they live in a tiny apartment and never can?! Who needs 3 months of food? Why is there two bows and a quiver of arrows? Who needs a large and a small safe?

It's so bad I'm using my grandparents fishing tackle boxes for sewing kits. I know you're jealous. 

In the last month the sacred family bread box bounced from Mom's storage to my brother, to me, and is now headed back to my brother.

I dream of setting this stuff on fire. Mom gave it all to me. She gave me full permission to do with it as I pleased. I just can't bring myself to fill a dump. 

I think I need those movers. 

Photo courtesy of my brother. 

The Dreaded Envelope

When I was two we moved two hours away from all of the family. The move was a business decision. My parents opened a construction company to take advantage of the oil boom. The move left Mom lonely, cut off from her kids. My siblings were grown, starting their own families. We lived about 15 minutes outside the closest town. Mom had nothing to do. She was determined not to like anyone in town. She still prides herself as being a loner, but then misses her friends. As an avid gardener she was frustrated she couldn't grow anything in the alkaline soil. When not running the business office or doing housework she was reading books and lots and lots of magazines. 

Mom started to clip articles and cartoons for my siblings, like "thinking of you" notes. One or two items passed on every time we went to visit. The items were small enough to be tucked in her purse. This was before personal computers were mainstream. Making a long distance phone call was pricey. The clippings were her connections to her adult children and the outside world.

Eventually the quantity of clippings and pictures were numerous enough to be sorted into labeled envelopes. One envelope for every cherished family member. Then the envelope size grew, manila envelopes. During one envelope delivery (aka visit) my sister, E, joked about "The Dreaded Envelope." A saga started.

By this time my brother had moved out of state, first to California and then to New York. He couldn't avoid "The Dreaded Envelope." Mom let him know when an envelope was mailed and she expected to be told when it was received.  

You couldn't just trash the envelope. There was no avoiding the envelope. There were quizzes! Did you read the article on watering house plants? Did you read the Family Circus cartoon? The Hagar the Horrible cartoon? How about the chainmail cartoon on deadly carrots? Wasn't that funny?

The move away from my siblings left us in limbo, too. Dad promised to build Mom a house. He wasn't a carpenter. He was a welder. Instead of a house she got a trailer house. Hang a picture in one room and the nails holding the wallboard up in the rest of the house would back out. Mom's 20 years of accumulated things were stuck in a tractor trailer in the front yard between the business shop and the house. The moving van became storage.

Storage was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and miscellaneous items. Things placed in a hodge podge order by well meaning in-laws trying to speed up the move, ignoring my mother's lace worthy intricate planning. By the time I could take direction and hold enough weight Mom would boost me up into the trailer, err... um...storage, and up to the top of the boxes. I'd crawl across the boxes looking for an item she needed or read off box numbers. All while carefully avoiding the hot metal roof. Mom would look through stenopads of lists, the pages filled with contents of each box.  Each page carefully numbered, matching a box number. I don't know if we ever found an exact item she was looking for, but she would be excited to find some treasure or another was within reach. If she couldn't find what she needed she would order it from Sears or buy it during a trip to visit family. Eventually Dad had to build steps up into the storage trailer.  Mom started sending me to get things from boxes in the van on my own. What a daunting task!

Boxes from storage slowly made their way into the house to be sorted into drawers or under beds. Mom made the trailer house a home. A home she hated, but a home for me anyway. When there wasn't a place for an item, Mom built a place. My room filled with milk crate bookshelves for all my siblings books and books she purchased from mail order. She made built-in shelves for the living room. She built a cellar/storage shed off one end of the trailer. Most of it was canned goods or supplies. By the time we moved out of the trailer and "back to civilization" the trailer house was full and the tractor-trailer had barely been emptied of a few rows of boxes. The trailer couldn't fit all the possessions any more. 

The next town we were in was closer to family. The storage trailer was left on a piece of property outside of town. Mom still planned on building a house. The house we lived in was in town. By this time I could carry boxes. When we weren't snowed in we made regular trips to storage. The house filled quickly with boxes. There was more storage space, closets, cubbies, and corners. 

The boxes didn't always get emptied. There was an extra room in the house, designated as Mom's craft room. It filled up with boxes. Some were craft supplies. Most were boxes that never got opened. There was a precarious stack of boxes lining the room, floor to ceiling. There was a narrow walking space next, with the center of the room filled with more boxes. 

It was here the Dreaded Envelope became the Dreaded Box. 

I wish I could say the Dreaded Box was a product of the Swedish Death Cleaning method. It wasn't. Few items were treasured family pieces out of the storage trailer. Most were just thrift store finds. Boxes began piling up in my sisters' homes. 

Was this hoarding? How can you hoard when you're sharing? It's easy. In this family items are "family items." Everything. Even if you purchased it. You can't donate an item without first asking every single person in the family if they want it. Imagine it for a minute scavenging a yard sale dresser, restoring it, and discovering you can't just donate it because Mother thinks everyone has some claim to it. I have actually hauled items across the country because I felt guilty at the idea of donating it. It's CRAZY!

The Dreaded Box became a virus. The family was infected. 

An Idea

The idea for this blog came to me in the car, trying to nap before work. The night before I spent the evening in the ER. Mother fell hard enough that all the nurses at the care center heard it. She needed a CT scan to check for damage. She was okay. She went back to the care center. I came home to piles of her boxes taking over my living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Boxes of things to deal with. Boxes and boxes of photos and mementos need to be scanned and distributed to the family. Possessions need to find just the right family member that wants it and will cherish it. Heirlooms that need shadow boxes, aesthetic framing and history preservation to ensure their survival for future family generations. Then there's the storage units.

Mother has been at the care center for a year. Why am I still struggling with all these things??? 

The reality is the family is large and scattered. Navigating the needs of 5 generations is a bit daunting. I could light everything on fire and be done with it. Despite my brother's encouragement he panics every time I go through a box without him. 

Mother has four children. There's a first set of three, my brother and two sisters (J, E, & L). Then there's me. I'm not exaggerating. Twenty years separate me from the oldest, my brother. When I was born my mother was 40. My brother was 20. My sisters were 19 and 17. In fact, my sister had her first child before I was born and was pregnant with her second. My nieces are more like cousins than nieces. 

The sisters' families live out of state, in my home state. I could haul everything to our living sister, L. She'd love it. L would take it all. Would she go through it, preserve it, and distribute things to our deceased sister's kids/grandkids/great-grandkids? Probably not. I have nightmares of her passing away leaving everything to her mentally challenged only child. I end up as a conservator, struggling to deal with all of it all over again. 

Our deceased sister's kids are still struggling with her things. E passed in 2013 and they are still trying to divide things. One niece has so much stuff and so many medical/mobility issues her mother's stuff is stuck in the basement. Will her kids or grandkids ever know the stories attached to the things? Will they just light a match to the house and free themselves of the generational trauma? Will the basement flood, mold, resulting in a decontamination crew hauling generations of things? What will happen to Grandma's rings? Grandma's piano?

I'm getting ahead of myself.