“Oh my gosh. I don’t want to open that box.”

Moving furniture and books and clothing is easy. It’s moving memories that is hard.

I am going through the last of my boxes. I used to say I was not a packrat. I thought I was more like my mother than my dad. My dad might tuck a piece of wood away, thinking it would find a use someday. My mother would be of the opinion that it’s easier to buy a board when (and if) it was needed. Generally, it wasn’t.

This approach keeps my parents’ house very tidy -- with the possible exception of one small room in the basement where my dad keeps his wood collection.

It turns out, I am not at all like my mother.

I have filed things away that will never find any purpose whatsoever other than to remind me of things I did and used to care about that I no longer do. For the last few days, I’ve been emptying the box.

Photos from when we used to take real photos, letters from people who cared about me, certificates indicating I accomplished something or another, reviews that mentioned my name, currency from foreign countries I will never visit again, 100+-year-old spectacles (why?), a lovely handheld fan my former mother-in-law gave me, clever things I wrote when I was in the fifth grade (really?), recipes in my grandmother’s handwriting, and even (I am embarrassed to admit) my old teddy bear.

My teddy bear feels crunchy. His exterior is badly corroded by time, I can’t imagine what has happened to his insides.

All of it is in the last box, waiting to be emptied.

Some of it is easy to understand wanting to hang onto. I am scanning some of the photos and my grandmother’s recipes, and they will move onto the great cloud in the sky. (That is where I imagine the cloud, not being savvy with computer matters.) They will likely get no more attention on the cloud than they did in the box, but they will gather less dust and -- most importantly -- they won’t need to be moved.

But still I worry that some of this -- some potshard from my past -- will be needed. It will be necessary to remember something I did or someone I knew or something that was important to me and, if I lose it, I will lose some part of myself.

The fact that this is nonsense does not lessen the feeling.

I’ve heard the mantra that we should keep only what “sparks joy,” and I cannot claim that anything in that box is sparking joy. In fact, the existence of that box is causing me a fair amount of angst.

Instead, I ask myself, “Would I experience great pain if I threw this away?”

Generally, the answer is, “No,” and the item is tossed. But sometimes, for no logical reason, I hold something in my hand, and I feel I need it. I need the fan my mother-in-law gave me, I need those 100+-year-old spectacles and, yes, it is possible that I might still need my teddy bear -- even though he has gone all crunchy on me. Heck, I’ve gotten a little crunchy myself.

It’s not a perfect system. But the contents of the box are shrinking and the guilt for hanging onto so much stuff is dissolving, and I feel a sense of satisfaction, sending one after another of my grandmother’s recipes through the scanner.

I just found her recipe for chocolate frosting. I’m going to make it sometime soon.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

The tree was lying on its side when I got to it.

It was a nice-looking pine tree, fluffy and full and as tall as me. The strong winds coupled with some unstable footing had caused it to fall over. This seemed too sad to simply walk by. I went over to the tree and, with a little effort, got it standing upright again. It looked much happier. I finished my walk, feeling I had done my part.

The next day, it was lying on its side again.

I examined it more closely. It had been relying on the rotting remains of another fallen pine to stand upright and the old log had finally given way, taking the young pine with it. I set my hiking poles down and hauled a couple of large rocks lying nearby over to the base of the pine, propping it back up.

The next day, it had fallen over again. This was going to be a bigger project than I expected. I hauled a lot of rocks over and piled them at the base of the young tree. “There! That should hold you.” That night, as I sat on the patio, I noticed how the wind was picking up. “I bet my tree has fallen again,” I thought.

I was right.

So, on the fourth day, I found another downed log, similar to the one my tree had been relying on, but not as rotten, and hauled it over. I jammed one end into the soil and propped the other end against the narrow tree trunk. A family of bikers nearby watched me curiously, as I piled rocks on top of the log to further secure it.

“Just helping this little tree!” I explained. They smiled, assuming I was crazy, I’m sure.

Yesterday, I returned to the tree. It was standing upright. “Hurray!” I said aloud. At that moment, I remembered my husband, Peter, and I had decided to move.

So far, this decision has resulted in little action on our part. But yesterday Peter ordered a moving van, so presumably things will become very real very soon.

We have lots of good reasons to move.

My parents and my sister and most of my relatives live in the Midwest, as does most of Peter’s family. Particularly during the pandemic, we realized how much we missed family, how many occasions we had missed, and how quickly time passes.

And so, we have decided to make the move and we are both filled with mixed feelings because it is hard to leave a place, no matter how many reasons there are to be somewhere else.

Standing in front of this little tree, hoping it would now become a huge, towering pine, I felt a small pang because I would never know. That is the hardest thing about moving. I will never know what I will miss, not living here.

But I was never going to know.

This tree may outlive me by hundreds of years, or it may perish by the end of the summer. I will never know this, nor will I know what any path I have not taken might hold.

Instead, I imagine, because that is all I can do to keep myself upright. I imagine spending my mother’s next birthday with her and I imagine going to the theater with my oldest friend and I imagine seeing my nephew graduate.

And, in the back of my mind, I imagine this tree standing tall for hundreds of years after I am dead, on stable footing because of me.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

It’s amazing that anyone shares a bed.

I know there are plenty of married and cohabiting couples who have separate beds, or even separate bedrooms, and I can see the logic in avoiding the snoring, the thrashing, the different sleep schedules, and the need to negotiate the complicated issue of bedding.

But since marrying and moving into Peter’s house, we have shared a bed, and it is not a large one. So far, we have negotiated a peaceful settlement. This is because Peter has let me have my way.

There were a lot of improvements needed to the bed when I moved in with Peter.

First of all, he had sheets he described as “microfiber.” I don’t know what these tiny fibers were, but the only fiber I was interested in having in my sheets was cotton.

I don’t think (as Peter implies) this makes me a snob. I am not one of those who requires an absurdly high thread count. It was my wise mother who pointed out that a lower thread count makes for a cozier feeling sheet -- provided, of course, that it is washed in unscented laundry soap and dried outside on the line.

I once read a story where a woman was ironing her pillowcases. This activity was proof that she was mentally unstable. I did not find the story convincing. I know my mother is of sound mind, and she’ll tell you that a pillowcase is a lot nicer after it’s been touched up by a hot iron.

Then there was the matter of blankets. Fortunately, we both like a cooler room at night, thus avoiding most of the disputes that happen between couples in the winter months. But Peter’s solution was to toss something on top of the bed that was the size, weight and color of a dead seal. That was obviously not going to work.

Once under the fleshy green leviathan, I could hardly breathe, and any kind of temperature adjustment was impossible.

“What if I get too hot?” I asked Peter.

“You stick a foot out.”

“I stick a foot out of the bed?”

“Yeah.”

“How does that help anything?”

“It cools you down.”

“It cools down one foot! Now I’m still hot but have a cold foot!”

We replaced the dead sea mammal with several blankets that could be used as needed, and I thought we had reached a nice resolution to the whole bedding issue until we visited Europe. There I saw they had one pillow that stretched across the bed that both sleepers could share.

“Ooh! I want one of those,” I thought.

But then Peter decided he wanted a peculiar pillow that supported his neck but not his head and looked exactly like a giant upholstered hotdog. I did not. So the lovely European-style pillow idea was scrapped.

And still the nocturnal negotiations continue. Peter (unbeknownst to him, he claims) will migrate over onto my side, forcing me to cling to the edge of the bed to keep from falling out. This wakes me up just enough so I can nudge him. He will, with considerable grumbling, roll back over to his side, at which time I hastily grab whatever territory he has relinquished. It’s a nightly challenge in a small bed.

But it’s worth it.

Because, as I move into the warmth that he has left behind, I’m reminded every night that he is there beside me, disturbing my sleep and stealing my covers. It’s a nightly reassurance that he is near.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION