More or Less or Even Nothing

Bombarded with messages from Out There about needing to get going in the Christmas department, I got up my nerve and asked my daughter a couple of weeks ago, “Can you sometime send me a quick list of things that you could actually use?” I might have predicted the answer; it came almost before I’d finished uttering the question.

“Mom, please, I can’t deal with any more STUFF!”

Still a few years shy of 30, she’s already arrived at the realization that accumulating possessions generally doesn’t enhance life as much as it detracts from it. Sure, occasionally we need to go out (or, increasingly, stay in) and buy certain non-edible things that might actually help us or bring us pleasure; but once you hit adulthood, you begin recognizing the annoying aspects of stuff: it has a way of sitting around for a very long time.

Eventually, the boxes that have sat quietly over months and years, the ones that have tried not to bother you, begin to cry out for attention. Or maybe you just reach a point where you can’t stand knowing that they’re there, unattended; and if you don’t start acting, deciding what really should stay and what should go, then your children will inherit this onerous task. Needless to say, if this happens, your children won’t exactly be awash in their love and appreciation for their dear parents.

This past weekend, my husband and I did something very different from what millions of bargain-hunters did when they hit the streets and the stores.

That image may send a shudder down your spine, too. I can’t imagine anything I LESS wanted to do a couple of days ago than jostle with hordes of people, trying to nab items that held no appeal in the first place.

So, instead of heading out in the car, we took the short trip down to our basement, which has not been known for offering tantalizing bargains.

Before I go on, I want to pause to commend all of you out there who have, through the years, had the good sense to get rid of stuff at regular intervals — such as when you’ve moved; or just when you notice that the ratio of stuff you don’t need anymore to stuff you, or your children, someday still might need gets too disturbing. And how about that slippery concept, “sentimental value”? Mothers, let’s face it, must guard against seeing this in every elementary school drawing. My mother definitely didn’t, but she was another story.

Anyway, when we descended — both on Friday and Saturday — we started on different tasks. Rob, gallant guy that he is, set himself to constructing additional shelves, thereby taking some of the “just get rid of it!” heat off me. Yes, I know that many of these boxes need to be emptied — of papers, of books, of old photographs — but I also know that this can’t be done in one fell swoop.

For instance, that middle shelf, the one with the “Peter and the Wolf” LP that I used to listen to over and over in childhood, holds my mother’s old photo albums — with crumbling black pages. I started digitizing about a year ago, planning to send the tiny thumb drives to my brothers (and ask them to, ahem, pitch in to the cost) but this is a road I’m still traveling on. Throw these out? No way.

On the shelf below — you’ll be excused for not being able to tell — is a hodgepodge of photographs of our own kids: taken with cameras (negatives carefully stored) and then with cell phones; some framed, many not. The organizational solution to managing all these is not yet apparent to me, but I’m refraining from tossing these plastic bins. Surely, when the kids come home for Christmas, they’ll want to dive right in to the challenge! Not. I hear the clock ticking more than I used to, though, and I can’t escape the fact that the contents of these shelves fall squarely on my shoulders.

Here in this corner, I’m rather proud to say, is where I made the most heartening difference. Can you tell?

I have a cleared-off desk and almost all of the boxes are off the floor! The only exceptions are two of those ultra-long bins — containing folders full of work from our youngest child (too much savoring going on there) — and a few boxes of books that just wouldn’t fit on shelves upstairs.

The real problem I must face — and soon — is that I have taught in a variety of high schools over the past decade (damn short-term gigs) and then couldn’t bear to part with the piles of documents that ensued, partly fearing that I wouldn’t have a record of my hard work left on school computers.

Now, each time I peer into one of these boxes and see teenage names I barely recall, I wonder what I was thinking. What are the chances that I will return to teaching LIFE OF PI, say next year, now that I’m at a different school doing a different kind of job?

In any case, let’s get back to the holiday season and its demands. (Would that we could have the first but not the second).

My recent efforts in the basement resulted in straightening up as well as making a large area of “pending doom boxes” (not pictured) that will take additional time to go through. My husband is grateful for the start I have made; a kind of burden has been lightened. Now I have these two words highlighted in my mind.

In many ways, it’s true: less IS definitely more. Paring down to the essentials is what we’re after, and that takes figuring out what that even means.

That little book by the cartoonist Patrick McDonnell called The Gift of Nothing (Little Brown, 2005) will no doubt be a big seller again this Christmas. If you haven’t seen it, go treat yourself. The slim volume, mostly drawings, captures beautifully what we all instinctively know: it’s the quality of our relationships, not stuff, that makes our hearts sing.

With the special event of our kids coming back here for Christmas after so long, there will be some wrapped gifts under our tree; but since at this writing the act of shopping feels even more ridiculous than it did in 2019, I hope a bolt of brilliance enlightens me.

I learn from my husband (definitely by the music he was listening to in the basement yesterday — ouch!) that Advent often feels quite dark, even though it’s a time of waiting for the great light that Christmas will bring.

The more Decembers I encounter, the more the beauty of a simple scene like this expands.