the TASK: the explanation

to all my friends who i haven't recently called or written or emailed and to my family who i haven't visited enough since i've been in CA, perhaps this is an adequate visual explanation of why that is, and what i've been up to. i've been hard at work and so has my dad.

the first task was just determining what my dad was willing to let go of and what he wanted to keep. of the things we went through, he was willing to get rid of most of it, which is a big step for him. now that my parents are gone (they left for their flight to tanzania this morning at 2am), i can start to organize all the stuff into categories, so it will be easier for people visiting the garage sale to look through it all. this is my favorite part! though overwhelming (to say the least), this is what i started working on yesterday: sorting all the candles into a bin; the shoes; the clothes into bags; the porcelain houses and lighthouses; the arts and craft box; the wooden trinkets, brass ones, clay and porcelain ones, glass ones; the kids stuff; the games; the books (crates upon crates); sports stuff; bags; wallets; and, well, the list goes on. obviously.

yesterday was really neat, though. something special happened. i got to spend time with my dad and we chatted. this doesn't really happen often. when it does, it's the standard dad-questions about life (about work, snark, vdog, my house). do you know these kind? these typical dad-questions assess if i am healthy and financially secure (or as much as i can be when i'm poor and jobless), and that snark and vdog are doing okay too.

but yesterday we actually talked about something beyond that: we talked about the disease of collecting. and my dad brought it up. i was blown away. and i felt truly appreciative that my dad and i could be crouched in the garage rifling through utterly random boxes of stuff that he has collected over the last 20 years (and longer), having an honest conversation about a habit that has been physically visible and overwhelming, but verbally invisible and unbreachable between my dad and the rest of my family.

my relationship with my dad has been strained--part of the culprit was all this physical, material stuff that causes so much underlying tension in our family--but strained in a different way from that of my mom's or brother's relationships with him. as my dad pointed out, my brother would never be found in his own home or garage with such a predicament as we found ourselves yesterday. my brother didn't get whatever it was that my dad inherited from his grandpa, who lived through the depression and had the same insatiable disease for collecting beyond what he or his neighborhood could ever possibly use. i, on the other hand, have at least inherited the propensity for it, even if it doesn't manifest as clearly in my life.

my dad said he remembers his grandpa collecting rusty nails and pounding them out to make them straight. i understand this desire. in fact, i fell in love with a man who enjoys going to the waste transfer station two or three times a week, just to see what he can salvage from the land fill. he's a genius at it; he brings back some great stuff that we use, that he gives away, or donates to thrift stores. he made all of our garden beds out of salvaged wood from a dumpster. i admire his trash-to-treasure savvy, his ability to reimagine another purpose for an item instead of throwing it away. and i believe this quality, which exists in my great grandpa, my dad, my partner-in-crime, in his dad, and in so many others i know, is an incredible gift.

however, the danger that can coincide with this gift is the accumulation of too much stuff, so much stuff that the things become functionless. they no longer serve a purpose. if you can't use it or don't, but still hold on to it, then that can become a problem. (if not for you, specifically, then maybe it affects your relationships without you realizing how; it can also become a problem for those who live with you or near you, who have to experience it as well.) and, perhaps, holding on to every little thing raises larger life questions about why a person keeps it all. is it making up for something else lacking in one's life? or what good can so much stuff do for you if it is completely disorganized?

maybe a more pressing danger is suffocation: not physical (though, i guess, that could happen too), but mental or spiritual or emotional suffocation. this is just a thought that i won't elaborate on now (because i'm getting hungry and it's getting later, so there's more work to be done and food to eaten), but maybe i'll get back to it in another post.