Not enough cases at work today, so I got furloughed.  I decided to spend the day taking down the Christmas tree and straightening up the living room.

We kept the tree up a little longer than usual, because, being artificial, it posed less of a fire hazard than a dried-up natural tree.  It is about seven feet tall and splits into three pieces, each of which is a load for one person.  The harder part was getting the pieces into the red canvas carry-bag.  I almost called my neighbor Jim for some help, but finally figured out  how to fit the puzzle together.  I crammed in the pieces and zipped it up into a neat package, then dragged the whole thing (thankfully it  has wheels) out to the garage for another year.

Some of you may remember my adventure with a real-live tree two years ago, a smallish tree with a 100-lb. rootball at its base.  After buying the tree, I received instructions to keep it indoors no longer than 10 days.  Given that it was more than ten days before Christmas, this  did not seem to make sense, and so I kept it inside for about two weeks.  When it came time to plant the tree in the back yard, it turned out to be moribund and didn’t survive. (As my facebook friends know, it took literally months for me to accept the fact.)

So when we decided to go the other way, with an artificial tree, it seemed to promise some relief from the heartache of the live tree.  We went to a reputable dealer, Seasonal, a few miles south of Gillette stadium, and forty-five minutes later came out with our new tree.  The next thought I had was “this is the last Christmas tree I will ever buy,” then was immediately struck by the finality of that statement and its implications for my longevity.  So no Christmas tree is without its heartache.

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“Straightening up” the house is always a daunting task.  When you have a few hours to spend you can pick out a small project, like the pile of mail on the kitchen table.  But when you have the whole day, the expectations outrun the reality and the result may well be that you are totally stymied.  I do not know a homeowner who does not feel intimidated by all of the  junk that s/he has accumulated over the years.  The more rooms, the more stuff.  For example, in our house we have the basement, the garage, the attic, and half of a large sunroom full of paper, old bills, the kids’ assignments from elementary, middle, and high school (which show off their brilliance so how could we possibly throw them out?), ancient  items like the stock certificates that my parents bought me when I was seven years old (how could I possibly cash them in and lose the evidence of  their parental love?), stacks of 33- and 45-rpm records (including Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Bill Haley and the Comets), and of course photographs.  Aah the photographs.  Nothing like throwing sand into the wheels of progress.   As soon as a stack of old photos pops up, the cleanup session is over.  So is the other cleanup session going on in the other part of the house, the spouse’s project, because the spouse has to see the adorable baby and toddler pictures as well.

Somehow my indefatigable mother was able to move out of two residences, our large Colonial family house of three decades, and the townhouse into which she moved from there.  From the townhouse she has settled into an upscale assisted living center, in which she occupies a sizeable condo with two large bedrooms, two large bathrooms, and lots of storage space.  So she has moved some of her belongings from place to place, but she has also been ruthless (in this context a positive trait) about throwing things out.

Of course, there are isolated items which come to mind, for example the two large pen-and-ink posters that I stayed up all night drawing as announcements for high school play productions (You can’t take it with you and Look homeward, angel).  The first one was admittedly a rip-off of the Beverly Hillbillies, and the latter based on a dramatic photo of Jan Capretz superimposed over a locomotive (Jan was the lead in the play).  I was in direct competition with Paul Kirchner, a talented artist who went on to become a professional cartoonist.  He told me that he thought my posters were better than his (mine were more dynamic), but then went on to draw a poster for Oliver which blew me out of the water so badly that I didn’t even come up with my own entry.

Despite the infectious energy of the first poster,  I ended up feeling badly about it because, at about four in the morning (that’s my excuse) when I was putting my signature on it, I decided to cleverly make it out of the block lettering in the street.  Since it was at the bottom of the image, which was done using one-point perspective, it was way in the foreground and came out very large.  As soon as the kids at school saw it they gave me a hard time about making my name so big.  I felt like an egotistical jerk, and found myself questioning my own motives.

Alas, those posters are gone.  And I know they must have been in our finished attic at 310 Yale Ave.  So, they must have been thrown out.  (Actually my brother Howie came across the “You can’t take it with you” poster somewhere and photographed it for me on his iPhone, but now I can’t find the file. (How did I download it from him anyway?) I’ll have to email him about this.

Anyway, when one is ruthlessly (and that is the only way you can do it) going through his or her accumulated stuff, the policy has to be “toss now, ask questions later”.  What comes to mind from the eighth grade is a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in which he describes a farmer going through life with a huge barn on his back, accumulating belongings including a wife and kids, cows, chickens, and horses all making a mess, farm equipment, bales of hay, and just plain junk.  He urges the reader to shed the barn and live a simple life, free from the tyranny of possessions.

I don’t think at this point in my life that I can do this.  My mom tried twice, but now has a new residence full of stuff at her center. (Even her large bathrooms are doubling as storage space.)

But I might reflect on the fact that all of our junk is the embodiment of the richness of our past and present lives, as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.  So maybe it’s the very act of going through the stuff that reminds us of where we came from and who we are.

Even the photographs.

Thanks for reading.