Prompt for writing class, first assignment, free write, don't let the pen stop moving, topic: something you should throw away but haven't.
I can't, most of the time, because almost everything can, or should, go somewhere. I deeply fear my house, full of crap, becoming my parent's house, fuller of crap. Where else do people keep their piles, their open loops, their question-mark-next-step-in-the-project, if not out in the open on the dining room table?
We moved from seven hundred square feet to two thousand square feet and marveled at the empty space, the infinite possibilities of Places and Things. Four years two kids later, and the Places are already filled, overfilled, brimming, the Things spilling out.
I purge I photograph I post I porch I message. They come they pick up they don't they forget, I remind. And/or the next donation bag takes root and begins to grow. (Currently awaiting my attention: the last of the maternity and nursing clothes that didn't make the cut for the maybe-baby#3 basement bin)
It must go, quick, now, soon, before it turns into my parent's garage: cleared sidewalks between towering skyscrapers of saggy cardboard boxes. Zero cars in the two-car garage.
I hear Mufasa's voice, everything that light touches will be yours, Simba. And I anticipate what will assuredly become mine: garage box city, basement box city, entire unusable rooms and closets. 25 years of girl's clothing for their four daughters, saved for grandchildren, and I have two boys.
