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!

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