Tidying Up

We've never owned a really large home. We've never had a lot of extra space to store things we don't use very often. Over the years, John and I have grown to appreciate a lack of clutter - we feel better when we are not surrounded by an excess of stuff.

We love to purge, and we're training ourselves to avoid the accumulation of things that aren't necessary and don't serve us well (Thank you, Marie Condo, even if I've never actually watched a video or read your book). Sometimes it's hard to let go of things that we have particular attachments to - things we've carried around with us for years. These are things we may have lovingly and carefully chosen with excitement and satisfaction that now sit, unused, in a drawer or hang in a closet still because I can't separate the value of the thing from the happy moment in which I chose to bring that thing into my home; into my life. 

This morning I was looking for a place to store three candles I had removed from a holder. I opened a drawer in our dining room hutch and saw that that was not the candle drawer. That was the drawer for table runners and cloth napkins and a few other odds and ends. I saw the disorganization of the drawer and made a mental note to tidy it up later. On the top was a lace table runner that I bought years ago in  Poland, still a single college student. 

The runner is white, and crocheted from a sturdy cotton thread in a substantial design, rather than a light and delicate lace. It's the kind of lace I've always preferred, and when I saw this runner in the shop, I fell in love with it. It is simple, but beautiful. I imagined it laying across the top of a stunning black upright piano, or maybe across a rich-grained wood buffet, or even down the center of a beautiful wood dining table ... none of which I owned at the time. I had hope that I would, someday, own a few beautiful things and that this runner would look elegant, helping to set the tone for my future home.

Years passed, and the runner was used. It didn't sit in box or a drawer; it lay under our favorite Christmas nativity set. It covered the blemishes of a second hand dresser top to disguise its flaws and "dress up" the space. It was many years before I would own a lovely dining table, or even that black upright piano, but eventually the runner was displayed atop those as well. 

And today, the runner lays folded in a drawer. It's still beautiful - it is not stained or torn or unraveling, and yet I have no desire to put it out. Styles have changed. I have changed, and I'd rather use something different atop our tables and dressers and piano, or nothing at all. I wouldn't call myself a minimalist, but the older I get, the simpler I want my life, my house, my stuff.

The thing is, I can't bring myself to give it away, and this has me puzzled. I get positively giddy when I can fill a box full of stuff to donate to charity, or give something away to one of my children who might have an actual need for something I already have, but not this runner. Every time I see it, all I feel is the way I felt when I bought it. In my mind, it's still precious to me, even though I know in my heart that its actual worth to me is not the same as it once was. To give it away feels disloyal in an irrational way. 

It feels like some of the other things I'm carrying right now in my heart that I can't seem to let go of. These things are not beautiful or beneficial, but I can recognize that they have also been carefully crafted and designed over the years. At one point, I think I found satisfaction in their placement in my heart and in my life. They brought meaning and purpose to me, and at the time I was unable to perceive their potentially destructive influence. Today, with some years and wear on myself, I see these personal traits differently, and would love to box them up and send them away in order to make room for other thoughts and feelings that I know full well I am in great need of; things that will help me lift my eyes and lift my heart and serve me far better than the old and familiar treasures I have draped across my shoulders all of these years. They've got to go. I don't need them, don't love them, don't want them anymore, but I can't seem to pry them out of my heart.

Life is change. I usually love change, even while I can appreciate a good routine. I cherish  certain traditions which anchor my life and help me archive my fondest memories. Like a cleared pasture that, left unattended, eventually grows weeds, then bushes, then small trees that grow large and eventually transform a field into a forest, every aspect of this world changes. If we don't allow for change around us and change within us, we get stale and yellowed and lose vitality. I must be getting old, though, because some of the changes I know with all my heart that I must make - I must make - seem so enormous that I feel exhausted even imagining the effort required. 

I don't believe I'm too old to change. My father passed at the age of 97, and in his last five years, we talked on the phone or over Zoom a lot. He would tell me things he was beginning to see within himself - long held biases and beliefs - that he wanted to change. I told him he was the bravest person I knew, to imagine that he could make those changes at that point in his life. He started jogging when he was 70, and jogged or walked four miles five days a week ... then six days, and then seven days because he discovered it kept his mind clear.  The last time I visited him in his home, I arrived the day he was put on hospice for the prostrate cancer that would take his life four months later. He and I went jogging or walking almost every day I was there. He was still doing one or two miles at day at that point.

I always said he was my hero for staying so active, and it occurred to me years ago that, if I wanted to be able to jog like him in my 80s and 90s, I should probably start before I was 85. I hated running, though, so for years I looked for other ways to be active. Ten years ago, he invited me to join him in a four-mile fun run he participated in every Fourth of July in my hometown. I didn't really want to, but I started one of those "couch to 5K" training plans so I could keep up with him, and discovered I actually love running. Who knew?

The point is, it's not just that we can change, it's that we have to change; change is life. If there is something I desire in my life in the future, I need to begin today to work on making that happen. The years are going to pass, either way. I can start now to become whatever-it-is I want to be "when I'm older," or I can do nothing and find myself older anyway, no different than I am today.

It is a struggle to know how to effect the kind of change I can see my life needs. It's not that I hate who I am and want to eradicate everything I've ever been. I just see that there's a carefully crafted lace runner in the drawer of my heart that I truly don't need any more, taking up space and requiring precious energy that I'd be better served to spend designing something more relevant and useful to the woman I am today. 

Maybe if I go for a run, a clearer head will clear my sights.