Today, another great piece of writing from Linda Stowe. This came from another one of our Wordle Words daily installments. And so.
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What do people keep in their attics?
By Linda Stowe
What do people keep in their attics?
Do people even have attics anymore?
Maybe they just rent storage spaces.
The attic in my childhood home, built in the late 1800s, was a small unfinished room off one of the bedrooms. My grandparents had lived in this house before we moved in, so we inherited everything in the attic. That included trunks of colorful costumes, musical instruments, games, and souvenirs of my grandparents’ travels. For a child, that room was magical. Over the years my brother and I relied on that room to support every game, drama, and antic we could imagine.
The attic in the apartment where I lived before moving to Eaton was in a space above my laundry room and could be accessed by a pull-down ladder. The kinds of things I kept up there were more mundane than the attic of my youth. It contained things like a pet carrier for a pet I no longer had, boxes of clothes that no longer fit, and Christmas decorations I no longer used. The only time I went into the attic was to put something else in there. When I moved, I pulled everything from the attic and carried it to the trash bin. I should have done that in the first place, since I never once used anything I had stored there.
In my current home, there is an attic above the garage, but I’ve never been up there. There are no pull-down stairs, so I’m not even sure how to access it. I suppose I could use a ladder, but I’m too old for that. Besides I am at a stage of my life where I am divesting myself of belongings rather than gathering more.
Lately I’ve been thinking about all the stuff we hold onto, the belongings we store away in attics and basements and garages. Some people hold onto things because they represent a version of themselves they can’t let go of. Others store things away because they don’t know what else to do with them. Out of sight, out of mind. We leave our stuff to others, telling ourselves that they will want the quilt our mother made or the books we loved in childhood. Maybe they will. Or maybe, thinking of their own over-full attics, they cart them off to the dump. Nothing in my house will hold the same meaning for anyone else.
I’ve been watching this happen to my next-door neighbor’s things. After the family put her into a home, they hauled away all her belongings. Maybe some of the things went to good homes, but I imagine most of it went to the dump. Either way, those things she so carefully kept stored will never have the same meaning to anyone else. They are no longer keepsakes. They are someone else’s chore. Now, two weeks later, her place is empty and there’s a for sale sign in the yard.
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Polly here. The things we keep. All of us. It may be a lot, or it might not be much at all. Either way, the things we keep tell our stories. Or some of them.
Who is interested in knowing our stories? It depends on our lives, I suppose. Many people have children, and that seems like a natural progression — that our children would want to know our stories. I know this is true for me, with my mom and dad. Yet, in my case, I do not have any children of my own. Just a progression of dogs and cats. I doubt that anyone will be interested in knowing my story when I am gone.
And so we go.
And so we go.
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Eventually everything connects – people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
— Charles Eames
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The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.
— Carlos Santana
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The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
— Anais Nin
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