Stuck

Rob declared one night from the bathtub that he would use some of his bike money to buy me a massage table.
Very very sweet.
He found one pretty quickly on craig's list and we brought it home.  It's lovely.  Made of sturdy wood with purple upholstery, easy to fold up and carry.  We had it downstairs, all of us taking turns with massages and naps until Cookie started to chew on the webbing underneath; so that's when I brought it up to my study.

One thing Rob made me promise was that it would not become a flat surface for crap.
I made that promise and then promptly broke it!
I thought cleaning out my study would take a day or two.  I was wrong.

You can see the head-piece of the massage table in this photo.  The rest of it is covered with large sliding piles of crap.


After a day of moving things around and throwing stuff out it pretty much looks the same!  Uggh.  Each item needs to be processed.  Years and years of neglect to now hold and decide its fate in a calm thoughtful way.  Papers, clothes, photos and stuff has built up in layers and layers like sediment.

So much to look through; baby pictures, drawings and notes from the children.  Stories I half started and never finished.  Articles I have printed out and never read.

My cds were stuffed in the closet sometime this year and I was going through them.  I found one of my old favorites.  Nancy Griffith's Other Voices, too and began to listen.  Songs I had forgotten about, but I knew all the words.  Songs from before I had children, when I was a different person, really, but also the same.  Desperados waiting for a train was playing on the way to the dump and I started to cry and couldn't stop.  I felt sad, so sad for the loss of the friend in the song, but also just sad.
Everything is transient.  My children are growing older.  I'm not having any more.  I'm getting older.  I need to make choices.  There's no time to do all I want to do; still I must keep moving forward.  Sad.

All from cleaning out a damn room (or trying to)  No wonder people hoard and can't get rid of stuff.  Going through and throwing out is saying goodbye, which is good for moving onward, yes.  But there is sadness and grief in letting go of all that needs to go.