Optimistic Hoarder: Box 002, Part 2
Box: 002
Part: 2
Provenance: Lahaina, HI
Contents:
A large “stacking” Squishmallow™ cow, with tags still attached
A neatly folded, empty Bath and Body Works paper bag
A 5x7 picture frame in its original box and two 5x5 photos of Mom and I circa 2012
A bag of unopened mail and unused greeting cards including:
A pack of blue, white, and green thank you cards
Multiple Christmas cards, including half a dozen “Hawaiian” themed and the text “Mele Kalikimaka”
A pink birthday card with a lady bug eating a cupcake
Multiple individual greeting cards intended for friends or family
Two postcards from Yosemite National Park
Two postcards with artwork of Caffè Puccini
A half-written greeting card to her best friend, dated 6/28/89
Operating instructions for a Panasonic wet/dry shaver
Photos of Mom and a friend taking shots
Photo of this same friend in front of a sign at Payless ShoeSource
A portrait of me (taken by my mom) during my graduate school graduation
A paystub from the Contra Costa County Community College District
A list of her medications
Many résumés (of hers) printed on very nice, heavyweight paper
Food stamp paperwork (it was old enough that it read “food stamps” and not SNAP benefits)
Bank statements
Miscellaneous unopened mail
Ruminations:
Upon unpacking the neatly folded, empty Bath and Body Works paper bag, I realized there are two types of people. Type one is the person who would say, “Why on earth would someone pack an empty shopping bag and ship it across the ocean?” Type two is the person who would pick it up and say, “Huh, this is a good bag!” I’m sure this is why my mother kept it, as there was still some use that could come of it. To at least partially understand this, you need to know that my maternal grandparents lived through the Great Depression and my mother and I lived with them through most of my youth. Items were used until unusable and they were repaired and only disposed of if they weren’t salvageable. Ziplocks were washed and reused and I was taught the importance of spending a little extra to buy a well-made item that could be fixed if it broke. I was taught how to darn socks and replace buttons on my school uniform after they’d inevitably get popped off after having too much fun on the monkey bars. Today, the expense, slowness, and labor intensive-ness of this seems more of a luxury than a necessity; however, I still carry many of these lessons. My wife and I have been known to fully disassemble and regrease the Kitchenaid stand mixer—in fact, it’s probably due for another such treatment.
The picture frame in its original box had a price tag on it from a camera store / photo lab we both worked at that went out of business in 2006(?) It was devastating to both lose our jobs at the same time and I don’t think my mother ever got over the hurt of losing a place she poured her whole heart into. It would only be a few more years until our home was foreclosed on.
My mother could spend hours in a Hallmark store and she had a special talent for picking out a greeting card that would make anyone weep. She was not a writer herself, but she recognized when she read what she wanted to say. A number of the unwritten greeting cards were to specific people, not because they were addressed, but because I knew my mother and I could tell who they were for. The ladybug birthday card is the one that made the dams break, not because of what it was, but because it was with the Christmas cards and the only person with a birthday around that time for whom my mother would be getting this very pink card is my wife.
Receiving beautiful, perfect cards from my mother is one of the things I miss most.
My mother would buy cards sometimes years before she would send them—when it was the “right time.” My heart ached seeing her handwriting in a card she started in 1989 and carried around with her for thirty-three and a half years. The Caffè Puccini postcards brought tears to my eyes as well. Caffè Puccini was in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco and I must have spent hundreds of hours there over my twenties and early thirties, over-caffeinated and practicing my Italian. When I was living in L.A., there was a fire at the caffè. It did not reopen and it felt like I lost a part of myself. I’ve set these postcards aside to keep.
Unpacking this box also reminded me of another binary of people: Those who have trauma around unopened mail and those who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Something about me is that from a young age, I figured out how to learn from other people’s mistakes and my mother’s actions were, let’s say, educational. My wife tolerates my tyranny around unopened mail and it was cathartic to take one of my letter openers (because of course I have multiple letter openers) and open up every last bit of my deceased mother’s mail before putting it into the shredding pile.
Thank you for being here. You can find previous issues of Optimistic Hoarder in the archive. Documenting things like this is hopefully going to give me the motivation to continue going through my mother’s things. I do not promise any sort of consistency with this newsletter and it’s free so, them’s the breaks. Also, these pieces are not heavily edited so if you catch something, no you didn’t.
Consider buying me a coffee. I’m gonna need it. And you can find my other work here.