A Couple of Boxes of Stuff

As a child,  I remember my Mom having garage sales on the occasion.  I say my Mom, because she would be the one hosting it and generally, on those days, my Dad was nowhere to be found.  Now, whether my Dad avoided them because garage sales are insanely boring (my opinion, not necessarily the rest of the world) or he could have very well been helping my granny and grandpa at the time, I honestly can't remember, but I would invariably be stuck at home during said garage sale and at some point or another, find myself rummaging through the toys that I either hadn't played with in a while or that my Mom deemed needed to be on the chopping (shopping?) block (see what I did there?).   

I would try to find excuses to keep them, excuses that rarely worked, and I would also try to smuggle whatever I had deemed a treasure back to my toybox in the family room of our house.  There was one garage sale that I had been rummaging through, and another woman came rummaging as well and discovered a red and white Coca-Cola whistle that my Grandpa had given me and she was about to pay my Mom for the whistle when I brazenly pulled the whistle out of her hand and blew it loudly, yelling, "MY GRANDPA GAVE ME THIS!"  And proceeded to take off with the treasure that I thought was priceless and my Mom was probably going to sell for a nickle.  

Even though I was only 4 at the time, I can still remember the look on the lady's face. She probably thought I was a brat, and I probably was (I was also autistic and ADHD and had no chill button whatsoever and lacked communication skills).  What happened after that has been lost to the chaos that is my brain (who remembers every little detail from their childhood? Hell, I'm amazed that I remember the whistle, let alone the lady's face), but I do remember snatching the whistle from her hands and running off.  

My Mom, not necessarily being a fan of me making noise, probably took the whistle from me at some point during the day and threw it away when I wasn't paying attention.  

Side note: for shits and giggles, I looked up the whistle (I remember it very distinctly being red and white and having Coca-Cola on it) and found an identical one on eBay for under $10.  The fact that the whistle, which didn't even blow very well, is now worth just shy of $10?! That's absolutely insane to me.  Discussing this with my wife, she simply shrugged and uttered the word: "Collectors."  

This all popped into my brain this morning after scrolling my Facebook memories and seeing a picture of my Dad on our back patio, in his favorite chair, enjoying the sunshine.  The picture was taken 3 years ago today.  That had been a really good day, and Dad was in great spirits.  We were getting ready for what was going to be our last Thanksgiving together - me, my Dad, the kids, my wife, my uncle, and his girlfriend.  It was just around the corner, and I'm fairly sure we were talking about this cranberry sauce that a [former] friend of mine made and my Dad laughing about how he had preferred the stuff from a can.   I honestly think that my Dad liked Thanksgiving more than Christmas.  

We were a couple of weeks out from Thanksgiving and talking about the turkey and the side dishes, whether or not my Uncle was going to be staying the night in the casita with my Dad or he would be getting a hotel room with his girlfriend.   

Those thoughts turned into me thinking about how my Uncle passed away less than 2 weeks into December, and then my Dad was gone by January.   I've said it once; I'll say it again, and I'll say it until I'm blue in the face - Grief is not linear.  

My thoughts then drifted to the thought of how the past two years has been dealing with my Dad's estate, all of the things that I've dealt with and how it's not easy and how all of the things that I've saved from both of my parents can essentially be fit into less than 5 boxes (with the exception of the various musical instruments that both of them left me - my Mom's piano, Dad's harpsichord, a violin belonging to my Dad, a violin belonging to my grandpa, my Dad's high school clarinet that Megan wanted for some reason and I won't let her use because I have no idea when the last time it was cleaned).  

It made me incredibly sad to think about - five boxes for two lifetimes.  Both of my parents were in their 80s when they passed; both of them had pared down their lives (or in my Mom's case, I had done it for her on two separate occasions before she died), but there was still so much stuff to go through.   I thought about the most important things I treasure that belonged to them.  For my Mom, it is most obviously her piano.  I also have various pieces of art, a couple of music boxes, her jewelry box that fascinated me as a kid, and various pieces of jewelry that she had collected throughout her life.  My Dad - the 1954 Ford Jubilee tractor that my Grandpa had bought brand new and he would strip and re-paint every couple of years (the thing really is a workhorse and I have the original manual for it that tells me how to do pretty much everything along with a wiring schematic for it), his truck (which our middle child is learning to drive on and has decided that is going to be theirs when they get their license), about half a dozen Kiwanis caps in various states of wear, various papers and stories he wrote, and probably around 20 cassette tapes featuring slice of life every day life where he would interview me or other people in the community where we lived when I was a kid.  I always loved when Dad would set up the tape recorder and "interview" me.  It meant we were probably going to work on some project together when he was really just recording for posterity.  Mixed in those cassettes were a couple of recorded conversations that my ex-stepmom made between me and whatever friend.  It's funny to hear an 18-year-old me with all of the bravado that an 18-year-old who knows nothing about life may have, but mainly they were just conversations about the same stuff that my wife and I still have to this day about movies and music that we like.  We were too young at the time to really care about politics.  It was also a very different world because my youngest child, who is now 15 years old, knows more about the world around her than I did at the same age.  I was definitely either insulated or naive, and I was 10000% privileged.  

I also have a ton of photos from their lives.  I have scrapbooks that both my Dad and my Mom made that held pictures from when they grew up in the 40s.  Seeing how different their lives were, I have to wonder how they got together.  My Mom wouldn't speak about it much at all after they divorced.  My Dad told me that they had gone on a date; she had left him waiting, and he left only to confront her about it. A couple of days later, they went on another date.   I laughed when he told me about it later and said, "You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble."  His response: "Well, Jess, if I had done that, you probably wouldn't be here."  My Dad loved hearing stories about other people and learning the collective history of our world, but actually talking about his own?  My Mom told me more stories about herself and how she grew up.   I knew my Dad had a one-legged pet chicken; he had a pony named Trigger (after the Lone Ranger's), he came up with some story about as to why my Uncle was nicknamed "Sport" (which my Uncle hated) probably to cover up a more nefarious reason why he called my Uncle that.  My Mom told me about her pet monkey, Lucia, who would jump on her dog's back, causing him to run full speed around the house and yard.  She would tell me stories about studying in Paris and getting a baguette and cheese for dinner.  She told me stories about how she got sick with typhus and almost died.  She told me about how the one time that her father, my Abuelito (who I never met because he passed away when she was studying abroad in college), did that made her incredibly mad and that it was not allowing her to study piano at Juilliard.  Apparently, he thought that New York was not safe enough for her to be in.  She opted for The Peabody Conservatory.  

Now, seven years after my Mom's passing and not quite 2 years after my Dad's passing, the stuff that I treasured most from them fits in 5 boxes.  

I started thinking about what my kids will keep of mine.  What will they find important?  What will be pitched?   They're going to have tens of thousands of digital photos to look through, things that I've written, things that my wife has written.  I doubt very many tangible items will make it to either my or my wife's death.  I highly doubt they will fight over the rowing machine or our collection of purses, but then again, I'll never know. 

Having cleaned out both of my parents' homes and having to narrow things down to those few boxes, I have told them many times that they are under no obligation to keep anything of mine.  They are welcome to keep whatever and throw away whatever.  I have asked them to keep the family farm and any properties that could possibly produce passive income for them, but anything else is fair game.  And honestly, if they don't want to keep the rentals, that's okay too.  I hope to add to them over the rest of my life so I can build that income for them to have.  I'm trying to grow the pile that both of my parents left me, and I'm starting to see the appeal of generational wealth and wanting to provide for any grandchildren I may have, or at the very least a way to pay for their education.  If it helps them get on their feet as adults as well, I wouldn't mind that one bit.  Both of my parents helped me throughout my life, and I want to pay that forward to my own children.  And maybe grandchildren, too.  I'm far too young to think about that, though.