Our basement has always been a half-hearted mess of decaying boxes and musty air. It is not exactly dusty, but after touching and breathing in that damp space, my fingers feel like they have wiped a chalkboard, a result of the unfinished cement ground leaving a barely detected but always present layer of white powder. In one corner are empty suitcases, some empty, others holding winter clothes in the summer, summer clothes in the winter, and still others are randomly filled with old childhood books. The basement flooded two years ago after a storm, soaking the bottom of unfortunate cardboard boxes lying on the floor, leaving soggy pages and bleeding ink in its wake. The various notebooks and binders were left open to dry, then forgotten about, and continue to lie there, blossoming mold and other curious fungi. Alongside my 1st grade drawn dog is a line of fuzzy mold from the damp.
The other day my dad became fed up with the mess (even though a good part of it is his as well), and the feeble excuse of, "there was a flood! Things are strewn about to dry!" no longer suffices. It has been two years since that floor. No excuses. Laura could never take being down there for long. The dense air triggers her ever reliable gag reflex. But ah, I guess I'm made of tougher stuff. I breathe in those dusty particles like nobody's business. Oh, and the sewage pipe was leaking two days ago onto the ground, so who knows what kind of brown residue is still there...no big deal. So tonight I trudged downstairs and began to sort out the boxes with my name on them.
Some of it is obvious junk-- school work that I'll never look at or use ever again, pages of doodles. Other stuff seems like junk but I keep for nostalgia or pride's sake. Like that A++++ (hah, kidding. Just an A+) on my 3rd grade Heidi book report, or my broken abacus, or the scripty comment on my Call of the Wild essay, "Tiffany, this is very deep." If not for myself, at least I need to show my future kids that I was at the least A) a mathematician ( I'll tell them "I practiced so hard on my abacus that it broke!" aka a flagrant lie), B) An A+ writer, and C) a deep thinking eleven year old. Right? So I keep the book report, the essay, the splintered abacus. And the Japanese picture books I can no longer read nor understand. And the National Geographic for Kids! magazines from 1998-2002. And the stick with the shark on the end that can open and close its mouth, nom nom. So on and so forth. Maybe one day they will become collectibles. Or just collect dust. Who knows? A few dug up items make me cringe, like the middle school gossip notes that unexpectedly drop out of a folder, as well the page full of doodled signatures I created for myself. In retrospect, these only highlight my inflated need for self-importance, but really, has much changed? Yes, but also no. I find the wind chime a friend gave me in middle school that had accompanied a letter apologizing and explaining why she had stopped being my friend. Two of the four chimes fell off within the first couple of days. The only two chimes remaining are the ones on opposite ends. No contact, broken.
The worst items are the miscellaneous ones. The ones that don't fit into KEEP or TRASH or DONATIONS. Things like the leather fanny pack from some obscure conference years ago. I don't want to keep it, yet what stranger would want a fanny pack?!, but throwing it away when I know my parents will probably still use it if given the chance. Like when they go to Europe this fall. Shoot, maybe I should throw it away and save them some outdated embarrassment that they will no doubt be oblivious to. It's still sitting on the shelf.
Now that I've given you a thoroughly useless account of the basement happenings, I'll end with this: In a heap of mostly forgotten items, what will you keep? What will you throw away? Why do you hold on to what you do? I tell myself I'll keep it for myself, for my future family to look at, but maybe, well maybe they won't care. Won't care about how Mommy wrote her alphabet when she was four, or about Fudge from The Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Nothing. After all, it all does become nothing. "Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust can destroy". I find myself wanting to keep my accomplishments, my "treasures"--the trophies, the A+ paper, the carefully colored fifty states diagram. I want to throw away the college rejection letters, the D's (yes, plural) on my biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, calculus tests (can you tell I'm not a math/science person?). Yet rejection and failure are also a part of who I am because I am imperfect and broken and have too many weaknesses to count. Can I admit them to myself, to my kids, my spouse, my Christ? I have to at some point, so maybe I need to keep some of those D's as evidence in case said imaginary kids and spouse don't believe me (hahaha as if that could happen). Now Jesus I can't fool. Jesus knows all.
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