.Beware the Perils of Unpacking - 1

Unpacking a generation of stored stuff started innocently enough.  I approached the twentieth year of living in a three-bedroom, two-bath, up-and-down, filled with clutter, memorabilia, and a quaint kind of classiness that probably only I appreciated.  This home represented the third of three, the last two I'd purchased as a single mom.  Pride of ownership had been hammered into my six siblings and me by parents who'd survived The Great Depression.  Cloaked in solemnity, Daddy's proud, precious, and pure voice spoke volumes. Taylors were survivors! And homeowners! 

Perhaps that's why my parents, bloodied but unbowed, gathered up their Mississippi Delta brood and relocated to Chicago at the tail end of The Great Migration.  They sought "something better." Instead, asphalt sidewalks, crowded with three-story buildings, cramped two apartments on each floor, greeted them.  Concrete. Sidewalks.  Until he died, Daddy blamed Chicago's streets for his calloused, bunioned, and often aching feet. 

Daddy desperately missed the loamy, rich soil of the Delta.  Mother did too, but like most women of her station and era, she more quickly adapted to a decidedly different life and way of living. Mother "mothered" in the era before a fluctuating economy forced both parents to work outside the home.  The Post-Second World War compelled women to work outside their homes. "Colored women" replaced them as the "day worker" version of the "Leave It to Beaver," TV. mom. Mother, though, had too many children to work anyplace except at home. Nonetheless, she managed to stay busy doing this, that, and the other.  

However, I digress. More and more I'm having to backtrack out of peculiarly circuitous rabbit trails. I wonder which matters, "nature or nature"?  I don't know; it feels like both occupy the seesaw.  At any rate, 18 years later, the inevitable glared back at me and forced me to face the indisputable.  My home cried out for a dispassionate analysis.  For goodness' sake, books had proliferated out of nowhere. Except, they were everywhere! 

Every shelf, closet, and space was overtaken with knickknacks (knickknacks?) that stood sentinel in every room.  Big, fat, half-burned, and mostly forgotten seasonal candles lolled in nooks and out-of-the-way crannies.   Like backyard weeds, unrestrained, and willy-nilly, stuff just "growed, " Like Topsy, it flourished. 

The garage served as a peculiar kind of greenhouse that "grew" just about every other imaginable thing! What should I do? Stop.  Take. A. Deep. Breath. Now.  Exhale. Hmm. Easier said than done,  Finally, like the old-timey song, "You Gotta Have Heart," I resolved, "...There's nothing to it but to do it but first, you gotta have heart.  All you really need is heart!"   

Bright and early two days later, I sat in my long-ago-emptied-of-two-cars, two-car garage.  I couldn't recognize what my eyes clearly beheld: a crammed-to-the-rafters-space that appeared unforgiving!  Do I need another break already? I just got here, Maybe I should spend another hour or two simply bawling my eyes dry before taking a stab at this daunting project.  No! Inhale. Deeply. Relax. I can do this!       

Goodness gracious, what an inventory: Kiddie bikes with and without training wheels; a round glass-topped kitchen table, bereft of two gold-sprayed chairs; boxed of taped, years old bestsellers; textbooks; tubs and tubs of Sunday New York Times; and shelves of empty mason jars, most missing screw-on tops. A couple of headboards;  a stack of flat packing boxes waiting to be taped; various-sized window screens. 

Screwdrivers, wrenches, ratchets, and myriad work tools; boxes overflowing with dusty 10, 15,  and 20-year-old plaques, scrolls. and miscellaneous awards from long-defunct nonprofits, grassroots, and community-based organizations; kiddie books and half-finished coloring books;  and more toys in various stages of abuse and disrepair than could be inventoried, presented themselves in various ways to my gaze. 

The disaster that 18 years of neglect, of alternately taking my garage for granted or ignoring it, stared me down.  There's nothing worse than unintentionally inflicting harm in supposed-to-be-harmless places.  Plus, like everyone who dances to the music, the time to pay the piper had come due.  I had no idea how much it would cost,  and if or how I could pay it. I just knew it had to be paid. I moaned, "O Lord, have mercy, have mercy on me." When I did; just as I surrendered my whole self to Him, He did what only He could do! 

To be continued as "Beware the Perils of Unpacking - 2"