it isn't garbage

Our neighbor across the street, an elderly woman with a sadly ever increasing variety of health issues, has been in assisted living for quite some time now.  Since the end of last summer, probably.  Claire and I visited her a few times early on, but haven't been since she's been settled into a new place.  Going to see her again is always on my list, but it keeps being knocked back by others things that come up.  Really, there's no excuse.  I just need to voice it as a priority and do it.

In the meantime, her son and daughter in law have begun to clear out her house in earnest.  Trash day around here is Tuesday, and, almost like clockwork, every Sunday/Monday night(s) they are out there piling up stuff on the curb.  I think that in the beginning they maybe brought some things here or there to donate, and then my guess is that they ran out of time and energy and the emotional stamina required to go through your mother's things and now it ends up on the curb, bound for the landfill.  Or it would, anyway, if a certain someone (ahem) wasn't so keen on going through the neighbor's trash.



(it's me, I'm talking about me)


In the beginning there were big things- a ceiling fan still in the box, a pressure cooker, an iron, a hand mixer, a record player, tons of dishes, an 8 track player, what-have-you.  It became my regularly scheduled Monday night programming to just back my car down the driveway and load it all in the trunk to take to the thrift store the next day.  Claire joked about me going through the trash 'all the time' and once, when we were all sitting down to a meal, she keenly observed that we were mostly eating off of and drinking out of 'things from Bernice's trash!'.  She'd roll her eyes and laugh but there were small treasures for her as well and I can see that she appreciates them and understands why I am doing what I'm doing.  Little vases and things to use in her outdoor kitchen, a small statue for her fairy garden...... the perfectly sized glass for Violet (her beloved doll) to drink out of.  A metal toy lantern she was quick to hang in her fort.


There are times I am amazed at what ends up in the trash.  And not because I think everyone should be emotionally attached to things, even clearly sentimental things (though sometimes that is the case), but more because it is just so wasteful.  Surely someone would like these things?  Surely many of them are still of use?  Another part of me understands, though.  I imagine it gets to a point where you just have to plow through and become as unattached as you can from the process, and perhaps just piling it all in big black bags is the easiest, least painful way to do that.  We are good at self-preservation in many sneaky forms, we humans.



Pictured above are some of the things that I've shamelessly pulled from the neighbor's trash and kept. An old juicer (I passed along the electric one in favor of this sturdy old thing).  A falling-apart box of musty but beautiful paper-pieced quilt squares sewn onto newspaper from 1949- something about opening up that box (buried beneath a bunch of torn fabric that really did belong in the trash) as I sat on the back stoop one night while moths flung themselves hopefully at our back door light made my throat feel thick and my heart beat faster.  The significance of those squares, that work....... it was like a portal to another time and place.  I romanticize things, I know, but still......... it got to me and I feel like I'm looking at a treasure whenever I pull them out.

Thin, soft, hand sewn baby clothes with the tiniest of buttons and sweetest little embroidery stitches.  I couldn't put those back in the big black plastic bag.  What I'll do with them I do not know, but I see beauty in them that I can't just toss aside.

A pile of kitchen linens, a few tablecloths, a couple aprons.  Some of these things I've passed along to other homes I know would appreciate them. One of the aprons I have most happily claimed as my own and as much as one can love an apron, I love it.  And that part of me that has the tendency to romanticize things imagines that when I wear it I am in a some small way connecting to those who wore it years ago, before me.

A pile of useful kitchen ware.  Mugs and bowls already in heavy rotation.  Two metal plant stands, easily put to use around here.  A sturdy stoneware crock, and so much more.

All of it, though- it isn't garbage.  There is a nagging part of me that wants to bring some of it in when I go visit my neighbor~ the quilt squares, perhaps.  I wonder if they would trigger a happy memory, or a sad one?  I'd love to know their story but then feel that's a self-serving reason to bring them in.  My own grandmother is now in assisted living with dementia as her primary health concern and that surely is at least part of why I find myself weighing out the pros and cons of hauling this sweet woman's old treasures (or gosh, maybe they aren't old treasures- maybe they were in her garage when she moved in, or she picked them up for a dime at a yard sale in 1972, I have no clue!) in to her room and seeing what she has to say.

Sigh.  We'll see.