Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Stuff of Life

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…

As Mother’s Day approaches, I’m glad I don’t have to come up with a gift for my mother. I did not notice my mother’s aversion to gifts until her latter years. When I was young, we had no money for gifts, so there were no gifts to react to. Later, when I had some money and she had needs, because she was cold and couldn’t open a can or get out of her chair, we gave her useful gifts, like cozy shawls and electric can openers and catapulting chairs. She always rejected those gifts. “Get those away from me,” she would gasp. “I’ll never use those.”

So we tried non-useful gifts, like pretty blouses and pretty slippers. “Get those away from me,” she would gasp. “I’ll never use those.” And she didn’t. Later we would find gifts we had insisted she keep. They were in the back of a closet, still in their original gift boxes.

When she saw us coming with gifts, she tried to head us off and send us back to the car before we could even present them. Helen is a creative and persistent gift-giver, though, so one Christmas she was slipping gifts into Mother and Dad’s house in the disguise of grocery sacks.

“What do you have in those bags?” Mother demanded to know.

“Just stuff,” Helen replied.

My father said to Mother, “Don’t you recognize stuff when you see it?”

He was always a wit, which my mother enjoyed saying was half-true, but I think that was one of his best lines ever.

I understand better now why my mother did not want stuff, though. Stuff doesn’t just come in the front door. It crawls in the windows and up from the basement and down from the attic until it just overwhelms you. And it’s not just your stuff. There’s stuff that belongs to your children, stuff that is theirs from years gone by and that they should have taken to their own houses by now.

I need to go through my stuff, just to see what stuff I actually have, and probably to get rid of most of it. Stuff is no good unless you know you have it, and I have lots of mystery stuff. It’s no good if you don’t need it, either, and one gift you can give to those who will have to go through your stuff when you kick the bucket—that reminds me, I think I have a bucket somewhere in my stuff, too—a gift only you can gift, is to go through your stuff.

But I’d rather sit on my sofa and write about how I need to go through my stuff than actually go through it. When you’re old and retired and have no schedule, there is always time tomorrow for stuff.

Since this column is supposed to be faith reflections for old people, I suppose I should tie this idea in somehow with going through the stuff of your memories, and the stuff of your soul, to get ready for what comes next, but there’s plenty of time. I’ll do that tomorrow.

Stuff. Who needs it?

JRMcF

The “place of winter” mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!

Dave Nash says that the links to my blogs and my email, which I post below, do not work. I apologize for any inconvenience. I have redone them, and so now I hope they work. If they don’t, you can type them in yourself as they are, because they are accurate, even if not workable.

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{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email list.)





2 comments:

  1. My parents accumulated quite a lot of stuff. When we went through their crackerbox of a house after they died, we filled a dumpster to overflowing, had it emptied, and filled it again. A neighbor dropped by to ask what all the neighbors were wondering. All the houses on that street were the same size: no basement, no attic; living room, kitchen, bathroom, 3 bedrooms. How in the world could we be pulling that much STUFF out of that small house?

    My sister and I figured that cleaning out Mom & Dad's stuff was their revenge for picking up after us as kids.

    I said we didn't have an attic, and we didn't, but there was a bit of space between the ceiling and roof, and my sister could climb up into it through the little access panel in the utility room (I couldn't). That's where Mom would put our stuffed animals, if we left them in the living room too often. We found several still there.

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  2. I think I have received more response, in various forms, from this column than anything else I have written. However, Lady Fairchild, you receive the prize, even though the junk man's "Shee-it, Josephine," when he saw Jo Hershberger's mother's house after she died, gets an honorable mention.

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