The Spirit of Things

The Spirit of Things 

Mercury Retrograde ends in 32 minutes.  I can celebrate.  I am setting goals.  According to some psychics, 2023 is the year to rid yourself, your home, of negativity brought about by too much stuff.   I don’t need a psychic to tell me my energy is severely compromised by a sense of overcrowding.  The need to protect the environment, “Re-use, recycle, upcycle” is not helping.  I try to find a use for everything, rather than add to the waste collection.  To further add to my discarding decisions, there’s a Polish proverb that says if you hold onto something for seven years, you’ll find a use for it.  Thanks alot, dear ancestors. 

 I will commemorate this year by finally resolving to bring peace to our home. I’ve been striving for a clean, creatively designed home since we got a home to live in.  It was not our parents’ house.  However,  they slowly but surely invaded empty spaces.  

It started when we first got married and rented a small, old house.  We didn’t even have a table to eat from.  My dad bought us a $5 round reject that had mismatched legs.  It worked fine.  After sitting on an old rolled up mattress, we soon acquired my aunt’s used sofa. The items and furniture began to multiply as our family grew.  Our son needed a crib.  The 50 year old one would work fine.  He didn’t stick his head through the bars and choke himself.  The same with the old high chair and some baby clothes.  Maybe old stuff was quite okay.  

The new baby walker we received as a gift was not such a good idea.  My son walked up to the basement steps and rode it down.  Luckily, there were no serious injuries to report.

I am determined to begin this seemingly insurmountable task of disposing of the past and welcoming the mindfulness of the present.  I feel like I should put on the theme song from the movie “Rocky” as a dive into this mission quest.  When I worked full time—sometimes a day job, a night job, and a mother job, I just survived by doing “desperation dumps” to make some living areas look clear for a holiday gathering on Christmas, Easter, or a birthday party.  Even then, except for Christmas, I opted for an outdoor celebration.

I’ve been trying very seriously to decrap my home since the beginning of remote work sessions due to Covid .  March 16.  That was my mother’s birthday.  Everything is so significant, so coincidental.  The ghosts pervade my home.  I have dolls from various countries my Aunt Honey and Uncle Frank visited.  My mom collected dolls, but she herself rarely traveled. 

But this is about the ghosts.  The ghosts in the crap in my home.  The ghosts in my head.  The ghosts that percolate life with so many memories I’m afraid to get rid of them.  

There are real ghosts in some of my old furniture, I’m sure.  I ditched the Ouija Board that held more ghosts.  That’s a different story.  Ghosts are not always bad.  Not always scary.  A presence.

It’s kind of funny that this one ghosted memory surfaced when my daughter, now grown, who works in a local Soup Kitchen , asked if I had a typewriter for one of the customers.  I remember my mom’s old black and silver Royal typewriter, which we still have. It is in great condition except for the ink ribbons.  Jaime’s request sent my brain back to an image of myself as a 6 year old typing my first book.  I had chicken pox and had to stay home from school.  I was watching Romper Room but saw my mom’s typewriter and thought that was more engaging.  She let me use it to keep me out of her hair, since she was busy keeping my 3 year old sister away from me in hopes of avoiding more chicken pox (it didn’t work).   I know most 6 year olds don’t write books. (I went to Catholic school and we had to learn how to read and write before we were seven in order to read the First Holy Communion catechism/prayer book.)  My book was about six little girls who were born at exactly the same moment.  Weird that I remember it.  I even illustrated it.  The ghosts in my head danced as I remembered that. It was that spirit in the typewriter that held the vivid memory. 

In my lifetime, I think I’ve only really seen one real ghost .  It was my grandmother, my father’s mother.  My sister and I both saw her in the very early morning when she died.  She came to our bedroom to give us love and to say goodbye.   But the ghosts that live on in my home are surrounded by the aura of my relatives who left this earth before they cleared their homes of crap.  

The ghosts don’t ding or light up like notifications on devices.  They don’t move around.  They sit and watch.  Waiting for memories to surface or to suck my soul back to the past.  What they don’t see is that this creates a wall, a protective barrier around all those things, preventing me from removing them.  There is a fear of losing the memories, the touch,  the reality of living with one foot in the past.  Stuck like quicksand. I didn’t say glue.  I still have hope of pulling out and rejoining the present.

I meditate, I tap, I pray, and conjure magic spells to quicken the process.  But it took 40 years to accumulate.  I will need something really powerful to clear it.  I know the Universe has its ways. I’ve experienced minor basement floods that  washed away things, but I learned that the memories can still remain alive.  Even without the things. 

Judging from the number of advertisements for junk removal, I can see I am not the only human tormented by these ghosts.  I guess some people prefer to exorcize the whole house, like GhostBusters. Call in a cleaning/clearing service to do the job.  Call in the Fab 5!  Maybe Marie Condo can help.   It’s taking me so long because I prefer to lovingly send them somewhere else, yet preserving the connection to their essence.  Some items can be ghost-gifted surreptitiously to people who might actually use or enjoy them.  Or at least wonder where they came from.  I learned that technique from my friend who would sneak unwanted knicknacks to friends and co-workers without their knowledge.

My Aunt Honey was my last surviving relative.  We were always close.  When I visited her, I would pull out her old photos and ask her about the characters.  I enjoyed these moments, especially since I could never have the same sort of conversations with my grandmother, who lived with us, but she did not speak English.  We communicated, me in English, she in Polish.  We could never quite use specifics. But we were able to communicate through the things that were concrete. Direct association, pointing to things, gestures, facial expressions.  It was a kind of sign language.   

Anyway, the last time I visited my Aunt, I went to get the photos.  They were gone.  I asked my aunt where they were.  She simply said, “I burned them.”

My aunt is gone.  The photos are gone.  The spirit is alive.

 Maybe some of my junk memories just need to be cremated.  The question then would be: where to scatter the ashes:  Please, gods, don’t even let me think about urns, caskets or bottles!

So now those ghosts are mine. Exorcize or entertain?  Hmmm.  Nobody had been able to come into my home due to Covid. Nobody could come in, but can they now go out?!! Can I get rid of the ghosts? Along with the crap? Now that Covid has loosened its grip and doors are beginning to open again, maybe 2023 will be the magic year to loosen the  stronghold of things past.  Who knows? Maybe part of the solution is right in front of me:  I put off writing because there’s so much de-crapping to do. But it’s possible that committing the rememberances to a book can create a Whistful Memory Obituary of Things history companion (complete with photographs) that is easier to store than all this stuff. It’s still February.  There are ten months of 2023 for me to bring this conceptual piece of Feng Shui peace to materialize... or actually de-materialize. Too many things. Maybe I will bring out the Ouija Board.  I need some kind of push.  I have a chiminea and I know how to use it.