The attic has been emptied and now the rest of the house is a complete disaster. They say it’s always darkest before the dawn but I’m having a hard time even imagining the sun rising over all this clutter. I feel like I’m living in an episode of ‘Hoarders’ – there is crap everywhere. I’ve been buried under a mountain of the past and am faced with the task of clearing a path again, one box at a time.

The contents of the attic was more varied than I remembered – the personality of the saver of the stuff evident in the stuff that has been saved. I’ve been taking a lengthy stroll down memory lane this past week.

We unloaded hundreds of pounds of books – boxes filled with binders and text books decades old. Some of the boxes had been ‘nibbled’ and inspired visions of classrooms of little rodents devouring knowledge like their lives depended upon it; eating facts, digesting theory and immersing themselves in wisdom.  Those students have long since graduated, the evidence of their attendance scattered between chewed pages, their thirst for knowledge relegating the contents of the boxes to the garbage bin.

We’ve unearthed trophies and baseball cards, posters and ball caps. A rock collection, seashells. Tiny rocking chairs, an old bird cage. All things worthy of reverence back in the day, most things trash in the light of today. It’s liberating and sad in the same breath and a ton of work. 

The kids have been even more ruthless with the purge than I – they need only peek into a box to determine if it’s worthy of a look. It appears they are much less sentimental than I am, tougher and less attached to the souvenirs of their youth. We are making headway.  There is a bottom to this mountain of memorabilia, a floor beneath the clutter, and I will find it eventually – I just have to keep digging.  

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