By KATHY M. CONNOR
Guest columnist
Twenty-eight years of raising kids in a small community, packing the house with chattels and mementoes, remodeling and redecorating have come to an end. My gracious, lovely home in Morristown is up for sale.
Twenty-eight years ago, I returned to St. Lawrence County, after living in Canada. As I regaled a former river rat friend on last year’s July 4th, it was sort of a lemming-like instinct. After having grown up in the Adirondack foothills mining community of Balmat, and high school at Gouverneur Central, I figured that a small community where I had enjoyed summers at the family camp along the St. Lawrence River might be a solid place to raise children.
My pre-move project has been to return to the kids what was/is theirs (render unto Caesar), or if not wanted, to donate or throw away. I’ve begun to unload some of my favorite tchotchkes, accumulated from various places, which may have infinite value to the beholder — Depression ware plates, vintage china set, and books from my laden shelves. As a former adjunct professor, there are lots of teacher education and anthropology trade books, but no one wants these, of course.
A friend in Edmonton, Alberta, has the duty to empty her deceased mother-in-law’s house. We recently commiserated by phone. It’s not the material objects, but the stories that go along with the items that count – yes, the sentimental value.
My 1880s Morristown house on Gouverneur Street was purchased from the estate of a retired Morristown high school English teacher, Sophie Erickson, who had resided there for many years with her husband, the Rev. John Erickson, former pastor of the defunct First Presbyterian Church.
We befriended the little old lady next door, who kindly began to gift my children with items from her own house — an old checkers set, a few decks of cards, toys and the like. Mary, also a retired local teacher and the widow of the former high school principal, James “Prof’’ Hughes, loved to share stories and experiences with my children and me. Gifting the material objects of her life’s accumulation was part of the reminiscing.
Mary ended up leaving her house “feet first,” as the Irish say, that is, she resided there until the end of life. Her son, Patrick, eventually moved into the house after selling his own. Hopefully, my house will sell before I leave “feet first,” with all excess items apportioned appropriately – bequeathed to appreciative relatives, donated to those in need, or even – and my green self shudders – thrown out to the dump pile.
Given my recent experience with downsizing, I suspect that Mary was craftily offloading some of her excess in preparation for the inevitable.
Speaking of the problem of offloading stuff, Sophie had offered all her home furnishings as part of the house purchase, but I had all my own furniture forwarded from Edmonton, so in the contract I stipulated that I did not require her stuff. A lawn auction ensued for her estate. However, an entire library of English lit and religious reference books was left behind on homemade bookshelves in the basement.
That was okay because I’m a book hound. Eventually, I remodeled the basement and moved the homemade bookshelves and the vintage collection upstairs. Sophie’s high school English texts and readers, arcane reference books such as rules of parliamentary proceedings, a collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, a sprinkling of religious reference books on The Dead Sea Scrolls and language dictionaries (from the time when clergy were steeped in linguistics) remained in their original home. The old volumes of Shakespeare have been handed over to my English-major son-in-law, but I suspect the Reader’s Digest collection will hit the dust heap.
This all brings me back to the point: It’s difficult to offload household goods once you are moving on. Everyone these days seems to want new stuff. I was raised by post-Depression era parents of modest means who recycled and repurposed – heck, we sometimes went to the dump to recover treasures. Perhaps that’s why my first career was in archeology.
It’s not surprising that stuff we acquire over the years, from our vacations, from our life events, are imbued with memories. But keep in mind, the memories are the treasures and not the items.
I am happy that some of my tchotchkes have been passed along but when accumulating stuff, remember that we can’t all be like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt – you can’t take it with you.
Guest columnist Kathy M. Connor of Morristown holds a doctorate in English from the University of Ottawa.
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