Well...the photo is a little fuzzy...but that's the inside of my PODS unit on the driveway. 21 days into this work of going through all the boxes in my garage from my parents.....and I'm down to about 30 smallish boxes. The miracle of actually getting through a whole PODS of stuff was not lost on the universe....since the low hanging sun of winter even shined in the unit last night.
I feel a sense of accomplishment and order....I've given away lots to Goodwill...threw some stuff out....and sorted things for garage sale and selling online. Last night....I opened a box of beautiful vintage blazers and a few dresses from my mom. They were gorgeous and as you would expect of classic quality clothes...have held up well even in storage. I know nothing about selling things online but will start next fall. As I patted the sleeve of one blazer with amazing buttons and crisp pipping...I thought of how happy some woman might be to own such a fashionable quality item...at least that is what I'm thinking right now.
Funny, in my life....my mother was always dominant...she did the finances....she was uncontested leader of the family....and architect of our life. But as I go through this boxes with so many many interesting things....collectables...vintage items....antiques....it was my father that saved all of this. I have virtually nothing from my mother....she destroyed her own records so I wouldn't find out her real age...there are no school photos...diplomas...no paper trail. Everything in these boxes are items my dad found interesting and I did too....because I saved them from the Estate Sale. Sometimes, I scold myself and say...."You should have let them sell this"...but most of these things that are left are what I have found unique from their life too....and hope to pass on to the kids and even to the other folks once I learn how to do that.
Interesting....the only papers I have found are in my dad's collections of papers...in the hundreds of binders he kept with news articles and magazine photography ....stuck somewhere in the binder I have come across prizes...my grandparents marriage license....pictures of my parents wedding....or the personal papers of my dad. I have often wondered why he hid such interesting papers, documents and photos in these binders of articles. If you don't search these binders page by page you would never find them!
Yesterday as I found an interesting note from my grandfather to a tenant.... and the thought suddenly hit me... was he actually hiding these artifacts from my mother? She was known to go through stuff and toss everything away...she thought everything old was "junk". Consequently...I have no documents from my maternal grandparents...no legal documents...no business documents...nothing. Whereas my dad, squirreled away hundreds of things. I wondered if he hid these documents in his binders because my mother wouldn't find them there...she wouldn't be able to tear them up and toss them out.
Of course the risk for dad, was that maybe I wouldn't find them either (I'm an only child so there was no one else to discover them). Perhaps he planned to tell me they were there at a later time. Of course, when he had his stroke, he couldn't talk or write....and he was soo soo frustrated. He tried so hard to talk to me...sometimes I look back and wonder if he wanted to tell me where all this stuff was....if he wanted to tell me to search through each binder for papers and family mementos....look through the napkins on the bar for the cash he hid....look underneath the stairs in the crawl space to find some silver coins. I didn't know these things when I started dismantling their house...but I quickly learned ...that dad had obviously hidden things away from my mother...and I learned to search every nook and cranny of the house as well as innocuous things like his stash of innocent binders.
I guess that's why this process has taken so long....my dad hid things and the times it takes for discovery is huge.
