Cleaning Closets

Three momentous events happened this week, coming together to create not only much chaos but also much togetherness and laughter with our three grown children.

First, the sucking sound coming from our wallets lessened another decibel as our second oldest child graduated from college.  (Can you hear the angels—or, on second thought, it could by my husband in a soprano voice-- singing, “Two down, one to go?”)  The graduation was a perfect reason for the whole family to be home to celebrate.

Next, of course, was Mother’s Day.  This, in my house, is less of an occasion to honor me as the mother and more of one to remind me of all of the weird and dysfunctional things I have done throughout the years to ensure that the children either end up on a psychiatrist’s chair or at least think they should.  This year, as an example, I was reminded of how I supposedly would put pickle juice in my kids’ sippy cups as an occasional “treat.” 

Okay, I admit, that is weird.  I tried to defend myself and say I created Gatorade before its time.

The third event was putting our house up for sale.  We’ve decided to start downsizing before my husband and I are too decrepit, overwhelmed, or uninterested to want to clean out drawers, the garage, and large Rubbermaid containers that hold things we haven’t seen in decades. 

The collision of these three events led to one overwhelming event called the Cleaning Out of the Kids’ Closets.  I, at the same time, began transferring the contents I keep in a large drawer into a moving box that I always label “Mary’s Cherishables.”  This includes memorabilia, greeting cards, drawings, and such that make me smile or laugh every time I see them.  I figure these will be good medicine to have someday as I sit in my rocker.

Having a method to the madness, the kids each put their contents into a trash can, storage box, or thrift store donation box.  I was thrilled that they were willing to do this for me and relieved to not have to do it for them.  Personally, it took me years to forgive my own mom for throwing away all of my Monkees and Donny Osmond albums behind my back when I was away at college.  I just tell stories about her now to get her back.

I pulled out my daughter’s baby blanket from my drawer, literally worn to shreds, and ran up to show her.  My youngest son interjected saying, “Hoarders, are we?”  Of course, when I produced an elaborate Mother’s Day card that he had made me in sixth grade, my hoarding took on a whole different meaning.  We especially laughed at the parts where he wrote “thanks for giving birth to me” and “thanks for making me Chinese and Japanese food.”  My Asian mother-in-law would be proud.

I also found a drawing that my son, now an artist in New York City, did when he was three.  It shows a bride (complete with Angelina Jolie lips) and groom standing under an arch with smiling family and friends in the congregation.  And then, quite humorously, there is a rather large mouse in the corner standing next to his rather large mouse hole in the wall.  Just what every wedding needs, at least in a three-year-old’s mind.

I found it thoroughly entertaining to listen to the kids laugh out loud as they found things they had chosen to save and others that they had undoubtedly thrown into boxes at the last minute trying to stay ahead of another Army move.  There was the bright pink cast that our daughter had gotten after breaking her writing arm the day before Dad left for a year’s deployment to Korea without us, hundreds of Beanie Babies that none of them could live without, and the outdated clothes they laughed to think they had ever worn.

Then there were the journals that I had them write in every day so I could monitor their emotions while Daddy was so far away.  These have proven to be priceless, especially those when they were little enough to only write three- or four-word sentences.  Even then, they had no trouble explicitly relaying “Brother is a butt” or “I hate school.”

I found it interesting in what each child chose to keep and what they chose to purge.  It was fascinating to see how things they had loved as little ones were still things they appreciated today.  I held back my urge to dig things out of their trash cans, realizing that only they could create their own boxes of cherishables.  It proved to be a grand Mother’s Day, one that gave me hope to tackle those Rubbermaid tubs again.