... because The Grandparents and Great Aunt were sentimentally attached to it, possibly moreso than I am because they made it for me when I was born. They offered to keep it in their attic for the time being, only after looking at all of the small silverware and plates and chairs and toilet paper holders.
The weekend was bad in ways that I hadn't predicted. Aside from the trauma of having to sort through my entire life to determine what are and are not important reminders of things, aside from saying goodbye to the house I grew up in, aside from saying goodbye to a yard (and there will be no new yard), aside from saying goodbye to a neighborhood (and there will be no new neighborhood), aside from dealing with all of the other crap that's accompanying this, I had to throw away all of my old emails! All of them! I neurotically printed out every email I received as a freshman in college because email seemed, in its infancy, as valuable as letters. Drunk ones, funny ones, revelatory ones... remember freshman year and the deluge of self exploration? Oh, they were beautiful, and I tossed them all because there will never ever be a time when there will be time to read them.
I thought I would be sad. I wasn't. I was too focused on getting things done, saving things from certain death, doing things for other people. I didn't have time to be sad. I did, however, have plenty of time to be angry. The weekend was spent mainly marvelling at the way the situation is being handled by people who are supposed to nurturing, put together, and focused.
I seethed. I clenched my fists. I said what I thought, because if they get to say what they think then so do I. I talked back. I made declarations of my feelings and drank too much. I sang songs with Sister and was thankful to be there when she broke down. I haven't had my breakdown yet, or maybe I've already broken down and I'm on the angry upswing.
I was nostalgic, but not for the family, not for the house. I think I've revised my outlook on my childhood in the past few months and can't really look at it anymore. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about where I come from. I can't even contemplate the morally confused signals I must have received. It makes me want to vomit, so I don't think about it.
I thought instead about old friends, about the parties I used to have in the basement, about long lost crushes and people who I should have had crushes on but didn't. I wanted to run down to ESW's parents' house - are they still there? - and say "I wish I liked him back. I was an idiot. He was such a good person. I was a jerk! Is he happy? Can I call him? Please?"
And oh the toys. The Parents have kept every single thing they (we) ever had. Every. Single. Thing. Thirty years of nostalgia to sort through in two days. Poor Brother had it worst, but made the most light of it by staging a dramatic reading of his 7th grade diary.
We were, apparently, spoiled. Spoiled with toys. Spoiled by relatives. The extended family showered us with every possible collectible imagineable.
Childhood me wasn't much different from me now. While now I make lists, then I compulsively collected everything I came across. I apparently also took really good care of everything I came across, because everything was in remarkably good condition.
I think Father made seven trips to the dump in less than 24 hours. We had to toss nearly everything. There was no time to consider how much most things would go for on Ebay.
Mother allowed us each to have one (which I increased to two, because how can you put 30 years of things into one tupperware?) tupperware. I filled one with scrapbooks and a few drawings and old letters. The second was filled with the toys I saved, the ones with which I'm not yet ready to part.
I took back eight boxes of nostalgia to hopefully sell on Ebay or Craigslist. Those photos will be forthcoming.
For now, hoever, you can look at what was trashed and what I saved in the Toy Tupperware.
Enjoy!
