Cleaning Out My Closet

Every year my mom insists that we sort out our belongings and give away things that we don't need anymore or have grown out of. I have a habit of never throwing away gifts. Sometimes this even extends to gift wrapping paper. That might explain why there's a treasure trove of paper and cards piled up at the bottom of my cupboard and it shows no sign of getting any smaller!

A few days ago, I settled down in front of my old cupboard and tried to establish some order in the mess. Even though I might end up keeping everything, it doesn't necessarily mean that I've stored it all properly. I had tossed them into a box at leisure and then I ran out of leisure in the shambles of the usual clean-up mode, so they got caught up in the bale-it-up-and-stuff-it-in-the-box-and-we'll-straighten-it-out-next year syndrome.

I hauled out the box, spread out all the things across the bed, settled down with a glass of lime juice and a puzzled frame of mind. Just to help, I put a CD that had been compiled by an old friend in my portable CD player and cranked up the volume.

Here it all was. Candles and pine boughs, CDs and pictures, cards containing heavy messages about love, joy, peace and goodwill. If that wasn't enough, there were all those handwritten messages of affection from friends and family.

It was as if I was watching my life over the past 22 years like a slide show. Seldom have I felt so bad and so good at the same time. So wonderfully rotten, elegantly sad, melancholic and nostalgic.

What can I say? I guess wonder and awe and joy are always there in the attic of one's mind. It doesn't take a lot to set it off. Yet there is a terrible and wondrous truth working here. That all things live only if something else is cleared out of the path to make way. No death; no life. No exceptions. Things must come and go. People. Years. Ideas. The wheel turns and the old is cleared away as fodder for the new.

I picked up the letters and cards to stack them away; with respect if not enthusiasm. Wondering at what is going and coming. Quietly awed into silence by what I have now come to understand but cannot tell.