- After I moved out, my mom kept trying to get me to take boxes of my old childhood toys.
- I told her to throw it out. I didn’t ask her to save it, didn’t want it, and had no room for it.
- When I finally had to deal with it, I learned a new appreciation for my mom and her sentimentality.
I sat on a bedroom floor full of my childhood belongings and felt overwhelmed.
I was helping my mom move from her 3-story forever home into a 55+ condo community, and everything she’d saved from my childhood had to go.
She’d been trying to get me to take this stuff — baby dolls, Barbies, and monogrammed sweaters I wore when I was 7 — for years.
“The next time you’re home, we need to go through your stuff so you can take it with you,” she’d tell me over and over to the point it became a refrain.
When I was in my mid-20s and early 30s I was bouncing around a series of small Manhattan apartments that were about 600 sq. ft. and had no space for boxes of toys. Not to mention, I hadn’t asked her to save any of it, and I really didn’t want any of it.
“Just throw it away,” became my refrain.
Years later, as I sat on the bedroom floor staring down the Victorian dollhouse I never wanted and an entire collection of Smurfs and Strawberry Shortcake figurines, I was pretty stressed that she hadn’t just listened to me in the past.
I bought a big box of industrial trash bags and got to work. As I tossed the ratty dolls, I also found old, school writing assignments and some of the first few magazines that published my writing.
I was glad she kept those. My demeanor changed.
My mom wasn’t a hoarder, she just had trouble parting with things
My mom was on the line of older Boomer, younger Silent Generation, and raised by older parents who had survived the Great Depression.
Like many people her age, she was raised by frugal parents who learned to make a lot out of a little and made things last.
Her mother, my grandma, kept a garden her whole life and ironed and reused wrapping paper.
So, I can see why my mom held onto anything that might be useful someday. She wasn’t a hoarder, she was very organized and tidy, she just had trouble parting with things.
However, I did not inherit her urge to save everything. Plus, living in the constant churn and turn of NYC changed the way I saw permanence.
When my first favorite NYC restaurant turned over, and then again and several more times, sentimentality about objects faded for me.
As I came across the old assignments and publications, amidst my childhood toys, my feelings of stress and aggravation transformed into a flood of love and gratitude.
My mom loved me enough to hold onto things she thought were important and reminded her of me.
I didn’t throw everything out
I did end up throwing out all the junk toys and selling the rest. However, I kept the writing she saved.
I have no regrets parting with toys I’ll never have a use for, though, I realize now that she held onto a lot of those things as part of a dream that I would never make happen for her: to be a grandmother.
There’s not much I can do about that, but I do think what life would have been like if I’d taken that fork in the road.
Today, her Federal style furniture is scattered around my 125-year-old New England home, where, after sitting in storage for a few years, it fits perfectly.
The Hitchcock rocking chair is the ideal seat in the corner of my bedroom. The family hope chest helps boost my chunky cat onto the bed each night.
Although she’s no longer with me, it feels good to have a part of her in my home.
