To The Curb

The thing I found when I opened the first tub is the only dress I ever liked in my entire life. Pink with a Peter Pan collar—just like my mother always dressed me in. Size 4T. Embroidered on the front are 4 small chefs – the two on the top are spilling food on the two below. I remember liking the faces on the lower ones, clearly expressing their surprise (and dismay).

I carefully take the dress out of the gigantic zippered plastic bag I had used for safe storage. The bag is filled with tatted doilies, crocheted table runners, quilts – hours and hours of women’s handiwork. The women of my family. The Grandmothers of my tribe.

As I take the dress out my nose is hit with the cool dank smell of mildew. I turn the dress this way and that – letting memories wash over me. I am flooded with little girl memories of long ago.

Before I put the dress back in the bag I take my phone out of my pocket and snap a quick picture. Then I reinsert the dress, re-zip and lift the entire bag, carefully dropping it into a heavy black plastic garbage bag. I pull it to the out into the weak sunlight to the curb. Gone...

The garage is poorly lit. Natural light from a cloudy day is filtering through the open double door. The structure is more like a cave than a garage. The back end is dirt and dirt covers the top in a low mound. It is filthy here as well as damp. Cobwebs are delicately woven between the old stonewalls and random objects that have been left here through the years: a rusty old exercise bike, a green fertilizer spreader, and parts of an almost unrecognizable electric foot bath.

Seven portable air conditioners are resting all around the floor on 2 by 4s, looking like tombstones in the faded light. When I first entered the garage I thought the floor was made of dirt but now as my eyes have adjusted I see it is concrete. My memory of the concrete floor comes back to me. I vaguely remember it on another damp and cloudy day when I left my eight rubber tubs here ten years ago.

The tubs are packed with sentimental items that belonged to my mother and her family dating back to the 1800s when my grandfather and grandmother’s families arrived in Kansas from Switzerland. I never heard any stories about how they ended up in Neuchatel, Kansas or why they left their homes? Those stories of my history, of my life, are lost forever. My mother ended up with all these objects – things I do not know about, filled with memories that are not mine.

In the second tub are lots of books. I had put some of them in zip lock bags while others had been haphazardly left in the tub. All are ruined. Without emotions I fill another black plastic bag and drag it to the curb.

I open the 3rd tub and begin sorting through glassware. I recognize some of the hand painted flowers on plates my mother had hanging in our kitchen when I was growing up. I know nothing about the pink or purple candy dishes, the cut glass vase, or the crystal dessert or sherbet dishes. I state at them blankly with only the memory that my mother had loved them.

I still feel the pain of my mother dying too young. She was only 62 and the cancer spread quickly through her body. I was 27 and not ready to be orphaned, lacking both life skills and the maturity to be in the world without her.

From my birth until her death I was convinced I had ruined her life. Then after she died I began to realize that she had chosen her life. She had chosen her time to die – to die when we were all out of the hospital room, alone – a way out of her disappointing and guilt-ridden life. I realized it had nothing to do with me.

When she was dying I was angry, scared and lost. The life choices I made after her death reflected my confusion for decades. When my father hastily re-married he did not want my brother, sister or me to have anything of our mother’s. We insisted with an urgency we didn’t understand and took whatever he would allow of my mother’s family heirlooms.

I moved the many treasures around for years, from house to house, through relationship after relationship – yearning for her. If I had them out in view she would not be as gone. The items weighed me down, grounding me in the past but they did not make me happy.

Out of all the tubs I pick a milk glass swan as my memento. I remember it being around when I was growing up. I do not know how it made it into my parent’s house, or if it came from Switzerland. I do not care. I like it.

Now, at 66, I let it all go. I unburden myself of my mother’s “things” that fill these tubs with forgotten memories and untold stories. I tote garbage bags to the curb, shut the door and do not look back.