I slowly opened the door to my parents’ house and looked inside, expecting to see chaos.
The living room was still perfectly decorated and arranged, neat as a pin, as usual. I kept going.
I came to the kitchen and saw no magnets on the refrigerator. Finally, something packed.
My parents are downsizing from the home they’ve lived in for 35 years, and they bought a newer house just a mile down the road. My husband and I went to help them pack. Their house hasn’t sold, so they aren’t in a big hurry.
It’s a good thing.
I found my mother in the back bedroom, sitting on the floor surrounded by old family photos. Apparently, she had been in this room going through memories for about 96 straight hours.
Her process goes something like this: Find an adorable photo of us as children, or of her grandchildren, take a picture of it, and text it to us. Find a picture of her and her girlfriends on one of their fun trips, take a picture of it, post it to Facebook. I estimate that she has 18,000 photographs in her home. And that’s just on the walls.
So, needless to say, there was a lot to do.
I was ready to dive in, so while she went to buy Bubble Wrap, she instructed me to start on the office bookshelves. Dad helped cull some of his cookbook collection.
Eleven boxes later, I had the shelves cleared.
Mom’s goal was for me to help her tackle the basement and the storage room in the garage. My husband’s assignment was to help clean out the attic and Dad’s shop.
My mother is a collector. For example, we got out 40-some-odd boxes of Snow Village houses and accessories; a box of Snow Babies; and lots of adorable snowmen, not to mention enough ornaments to decorate every Christmas tree in Whoville.
Then there’s her Rowe Pottery and wonderful vintage ladies-head vases.
At least she’s organized. This would be an episode of Hoarders in lesser hands.
One of the fun parts of moving is the things you find.
Mom and I went to run an errand, and when we got back, my husband had found a 20-by-30-inch framed photo of her in her Girl Scout uniform. He had propped it up by the garage. I don’t remember ever seeing that photo in my life, and it’s hard to miss.
From the attic, we found several treasures, including scrapbooks of mine and my brother’s. After making Mom feel guilty for storing them in a hot, dusty attic, I looked through them. In kindergarten, my brother had colored a picture of a house on fire and had dictated to his teacher:
“Someone missed the ashtray and caught the house on fire.” Mom quit smoking cold turkey years later.
My brother’s Six Million Dollar Man Bionic Transport and Repair Station was in the attic, too, but astronaut Steve Austin was missing in action.
I took a picture of it and texted it to him. “Don’t sell it,” he texted back. I wouldn’t dream of it. I also took pictures of his old comic books, a chess set and baseball cards, then a sweet letter to Santa that he wrote. For my daughter-in-law, the dog-lover, I took a picture of a photo of me at 3 days old lying on a bed with my Nano’s Chihuahua staring me down. I sat and read a letter I had written to my mother 23 years ago, just after I’d moved away.
Yes, I am my mother’s daughter. Time goes by too fast, so we try to hold onto the past with pictures, newspaper clippings, cards and letters.
My mother is coming to visit in a few weeks, and she told me she’s bringing a big suitcase full of my “memories.”
I will probably store it all in the attic until it’s time for my husband and me to downsize, and then I will go through it all, slowly and deliberately, take pictures and send them to my kids.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.