Letting things go, letting things come

The ups, downs, and sideways of life this week.

Unloading my mother’s wedding china into my new home. 2.2.23

“Thank God for the things I do not own,” —St. Teresa of Avila

Each week has its little torrents of chaos and moments of deep calm and joy.

My joyous snatches have been mostly from dog-sitting a sweetheart named Alma (“soul” in Spanish.)

As Mary Oliver writes in her doting collection, Dog Songs, “of all the sights I love in this world — and there are plenty — very near the top of the list is this one: dogs without leashes.”

Another great joy comes from this Substack community. Reading your comments and messages touches me deeply, and it’s so delicious to read new writers on Substack each week. I’m growing a community of creatives who I have never met, but love to read.

One of the highlights of the week was Elizabeth Welliver Hengen’s “Imbolc” from her series Poem Land. I was nearly in tears reading through the verses, and only on my second pass through her words did I notice it was dedicated, “For Vanessa.” If you’d like more beautiful writing to waft through your inner ear every week, I highly recommend her newsletter.

My poetry and record shelf; one of what will have to be at least 25 bookshelves in this home. 2.3.23

The rest of the week was mixed. The good had bad in it, and the bad had some good.

I was offered a job! Cause for celebration. I was thrilled to take it, then heartbroken by the reality of how little I’ll be paid. I grieved the version of my life I thought I would have, faced with the reality of having to work a second job to make ends meet.

I got the keys to my new rental home in Asheville, uplifting me with the joy of decorating and envisioning a beautiful, cozy existence. But as I unloaded box upon box, an insidious sadness set in.

What is now mine was my mother’s. I have so much art, so many books. But I also have things that I was never supposed to be burdened with. My dead brother’s childhood art, my self-published books from age five. What am I meant to do with these things except lug them around for the next fifty years, not out of my own sentimentality, but out of a presupposed sense of duty to them both?

The saddest thought arose when I was worrying about finding a roommate. Mom and I lived together well. We had fun together. It would be so much better if she was alive.

The lowest part of my week was when I went to my storage unit to load my station wagon for the 20th time. The day before, I’d driven off, mistaking the lock’s weight and shape in my pocket for the tape measure I carried around all week. Halfway back to Asheville, I realized the mistake. It’ll be fine for a night, I figured.

When I returned, only the books and my mother’s writings were left. The bins and bins of papers were all too heavy and admittedly unprofitable to take. But the tea set I hand-painted as a child was gone. My shoe-box rock collection. (I will credit the thief’s taste—I would immediately gravitate to the odd collection of desert rock and mule teeth, too.) A little box of Christmas decorations. And a five-foot-tall carved wooden giraffe from Malawi, which my father gave me when I learned I was not moving back to Africa.

I agree with St. Teresa. I thank God for the things I do not own. Objects, as precious and beautiful as they may be, are burdens. There’s great wisdom in non-possession, aparigraha, one of yoga’s five core philosophies or yamas. Monks don’t amass trinkets for good reason. They clutter the path to enlightenment.

Everything of monetary value (aside from the giraffe) I’d already moved out. Nothing was lost but symbols.

The childhood tea set would have been a gift to my one-day child, a sweet hand-me-down. I don’t care so much about it—what touched me was the knowledge that my mom had thought that far ahead. That she carefully wrapped those little clay cups in tissue paper and wrote in Sharpie on the box: “Vanessa Keeps.” The thought that she, at one point, planned for grandmotherhood, that there was a time she believed her life would last that long.

My giraffe friend is the hardest loss because it was the most symbolic. When my mother knelt down to tell Quentin and me we weren’t going back to Africa, that our lives there were disrupted, it came with the promise that daddy would bring us something from Malawi.

After two years of riding on dirt roads and seeing arrays of beautifully carved giraffes taller than me, I knew exactly what I wanted. It was a promise from my father that he was not abandoning me. A promise that, though he was half a world away, he wasn’t gone.

It stood in my childhood bedroom. During sleepovers and slumber parties, my friends and I would dress it up, put a hat on it, and pretend it was our strapping boyfriend coming to whisk us away. It had a good life with me, I think. It lost an ear at some point, which I do still have. (My cousin, helping me move, made me cackle when he saw the lone wooden ear, saying “You know, that was actually my favorite part of the whole thing!”)

In “Dynamics of Faith,” Paul Tillich eloquently puts how symbols are created for their own self-destruction. Symbols point to something beyond themselves. Once they guide you in that direction, you pass them by and they are no longer useful. You don’t stop forever at the road sign, you look and then go down the street.

It’s true for the crucifix, the liberty bell, and currency. It’s definitely true for my giraffe. When I was eight, I needed a symbol to represent my father’s support and love. Now, I don’t need it. I know his love. And I don’t need my tea set to know my mother cared for me with all her heart, that she looked at me as a child and saw a whole, blessed life before me. I know her love.

When I look beyond the violation of the theft itself, I can almost be grateful. What was I going to do with Quentin’s Christmas stocking? Keep it forever as I move back and forth around the world? (I do also wonder what they will do with our Christmas stockings, but perhaps they’ll turn a profit somehow.) I would never have the chops to just throw away their things. I wear Quentin’s shirt to rags. I patch my mother’s clothes and keep them on. I needed to be rid of some of these belongings, and here is that gift.

Things come, and things go. What clears away makes space for the new. Who knows what funky animal statue I could come into next? (I’ve been seriously eyeing a stained glass rooster lamp.) I need space to build my own memories, my own life. And, as I told my grandmother years ago, though I’m happy to be my mother’s archivist, “I can’t also be her museum curator.”

What memories do different objects in your home evoke in you? What symbols are stored within? And, if you’re trying to do some pre-spring cleaning, can you keep the symbol without the object? Or the meaning without the symbol?

But! If you do want to be rid of things and don’t have the guts to do it yourself, just let me know. I can recommend a highly reputable storage facility.

Deciding what to hang. 2.3.23