A member of the local weavers' guild passed away recently, and her family is making her yarn stash available to those who want to buy it at a discount. I thought about it and managed to talk myself out of it---I have so much yarn tucked away in bins in the crawlspace already. Really, I shouldn't buy more unless it's for a specific project.
It got me to thinking, though, of all the "stashed" stuff I have that my family will have to clear out when I'm gone. Will any of it mean anything to anyone but me? The old sepia photographs I found of plump women at the beach in about 1940 (not relatives). The mismatched crocheted angels and bells and snowflakes that won't fit on my Christmas tree. The notes I took at the Provincial Archives while researching the McKendry family tree. The stack of antique postcards from Germany. The drawers of recipes enthusiastically copied but rarely tried. The dried-out paints left from that glass-painting hobby. A Dremel and all its parts that I haven't used in a decade. Doodled floorplans and clippings from design magazines. Bottles of self-saved vegetable seeds. Bent spades and dull secateurs. The scrawling drivel of the journal I kept when I was seven.
Is this what my whole life has come down to? Is this what I have to show for it? Well no, obviously there's more to it than that. I have five wonderful direct descendants if nothing else. And a stack of books I've written that I'm proud of. And the journals from my later years have more valuable substance to them. But still...
Some sorting out to do. Some consolidating and discarding to carry out. I always think of myself as a minimalist, generally...and then I remember the crawlspace. Still some work to be done!
No comments:
Post a Comment