Thursday, May 12, 2005
Just to let everyone know the bees are taken care of and I didn't get stung or pay a lot of money, which is a relief.
Joe sent me a link to someone's webpage filled with pictures of someone's mother's house, filled with unopened boxes of stuff from ebay. The poor mother was obviously mentally ill. It brought back memories of my father, who could never throw anything away and wanted to save things. So when we moved 200 miles he loaded up a 20-ft-long truck with scrap lumber, "you never know when we might need it." Even as a kid I knew that was stupid. Our attic filled up with all sorts of stuff, I remember with embarassment the electric fireplace with simulated bricks and simulated flames. He thought that was somehow classy, I thought it looked like oversized dollhouse furniture.
In 1996 my parents had to sell the farm and I went home to help sort the mess out. My father was apopletic because we were throwing out old magazines and Reader's Digest Condensed Books. "You never know..." he'd start up, but since he had a stroke and was partially paralyzed, there wasn't much he could do but sit there and sob. It was rather heart-breaking, but also made me angry that he was still manipulating us.
In his dresser I found many carefully folded shirts- Christmas presents that he refused to wear because he wanted to save them for the future. There were unpleasant aspects of this hording behavior- he didn't like his clothes to be washed because he'd seen the lint that came off- that was evidence that the clothes were being damaged while being washed. It didn't occur to me later that my father needed to see a shrink.
I've mostly escaped this behavior. I have some boxes of old letters and postcards and a china cabinet filled with family heirlooms. More important to me is the storehouse of memories in my head, those are the things I like to pull out and examine from time to time, even if some of the memories aren't pleasant or just a little odd.
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Joe sent me a link to someone's webpage filled with pictures of someone's mother's house, filled with unopened boxes of stuff from ebay. The poor mother was obviously mentally ill. It brought back memories of my father, who could never throw anything away and wanted to save things. So when we moved 200 miles he loaded up a 20-ft-long truck with scrap lumber, "you never know when we might need it." Even as a kid I knew that was stupid. Our attic filled up with all sorts of stuff, I remember with embarassment the electric fireplace with simulated bricks and simulated flames. He thought that was somehow classy, I thought it looked like oversized dollhouse furniture.
In 1996 my parents had to sell the farm and I went home to help sort the mess out. My father was apopletic because we were throwing out old magazines and Reader's Digest Condensed Books. "You never know..." he'd start up, but since he had a stroke and was partially paralyzed, there wasn't much he could do but sit there and sob. It was rather heart-breaking, but also made me angry that he was still manipulating us.
In his dresser I found many carefully folded shirts- Christmas presents that he refused to wear because he wanted to save them for the future. There were unpleasant aspects of this hording behavior- he didn't like his clothes to be washed because he'd seen the lint that came off- that was evidence that the clothes were being damaged while being washed. It didn't occur to me later that my father needed to see a shrink.
I've mostly escaped this behavior. I have some boxes of old letters and postcards and a china cabinet filled with family heirlooms. More important to me is the storehouse of memories in my head, those are the things I like to pull out and examine from time to time, even if some of the memories aren't pleasant or just a little odd.
