CLUTTER

Enjoy this trek down memory lane:

August, 2018

Skittering, shuffling, scampering, out of breath I am.

Books and papers and recipes,

Photos and letters and souvenirs.

Memorabilia.

Spilling over. Cramped and crowded I am.

This stuff of forty years, tucked away, stored, forgotten.

I have become not the boss of my house.

Declutter I must.

Out with forgotten books we haven’t read in ten years.

But not this torn one, this one I read as a new mom.

Out with these receipts, yellowed with age, hard to read.

But not this one, Jonathan’s first ten-speed bike.

These recipes can go, how did there get to be so many?

But I’ll keep these with my pencil notes at the bottom,

When I was only just learning to cook.

Learning to be a mom, learning to be a wife.

But, oh, the photos and souvenirs and  mementoes!

These boxes hold the history of our lives.

Remember this vacation, how small the boys were then.

Broken arms, first days as school, proud drawings.

And then I find it, fallen here to the bottom of the box.

The necklaces from the neighbor’s rummage sale.

Bought with my sons’ own dimes and nickels.

Laid on my plate at supper to surprise me.

I lift them from the box and hold them to my chest.

And I know, this stuff, all this stuff

Is not just junk as I thought.

No, never junk.

Each thing a gift to carry us back through days and years

And weeks of our lives together. Reminding us

Of babies born, of birthdays and anniversaries.

Of illness, and healing.

Of jobs lost, and companies on strike.

Of new cars, and bunk beds, and vacations.

Of children grown and leaving.

And of deaths.

I save out these few things, ones that warm my heart.

And back they go, into their box, onto the shelf.

One shelf for them now. Not ten.

Nine shelves left, empty, open, waiting.

I will fill them again, soon.

With memories of today, of this year, and next.

With mementoes of my new adventures.

Now that I am seventy-five.