While packing up a 2-bedroom apartment, I’m amazed by how much stuff 2 people can seemingly collect over the course of 2.5 years of living in one space. We have a nice sized apartment, but you would think we were living in a Barrington-like McMansion with the items we have strewed about just waiting to call a cardboard box their home. By nurture, I am a pack-rat. You may remember some of the notebooks I have saved or this brilliant piece of work. I learned this behavior from watching Ada. She still has recipes from 1968 on how to make the best chocolate pudding. She stuffs them into her large recipe book that she only uses when she’s found another recipe she’s going to store in the cookbook of nothingness – because nothing that goes in there ever comes out. EVER.
Either way, I decided to stop the trend. I was throwing things away, by the bag full. One of the things I found was a dream journal I used to keep. I had only written in a few pages of it. Other than that it was a perfectly usable journal. I decided to tear out the few pages I had written in and give it to my nieces who might find a better use for it.
I came bearing gifts of journals, tin jewelry boxes, random earrings and rocks that I would never have a use for. I left them at Ada’s house knowing the grandchildren would be there shortly to scavenge the goodie bag. The next day, Ada told me how they ended up negotiating who got what (i.e. they argued, manipulated, cried and eventually used brute force).
“Did you know that journal that you had still had some writing in it,” Ada said.
“No,” I replied, slightly blushing.
My sisters and I were never very open with Ada. She knew this so she would read our diaries when we were gone. “I can’t believe what you said about so-and-so,” she would say. “You read my diary!” I would shout, “How dare you!” And our on-going quarrel would continue.
“I thought I tore them all out,” I said.
“You didn’t,” she said with that still stare. It’s the stare where she is trying to hide that she’s judging you but there is nothing more that she wants to do at that very moment. Her lips get tight, her eye brows raise and she thinks in the back of her mind, “why can’t my kids be more like the ones on TV – PERFECT.”
“Well, geez, I can’t remember what I wrote in my dream journal, it was so long ago.”
“It was from 2004. And actually, they were kinda stupid.”
“Thanks, mom.”
“What? I don’t fluff people up. I tell them the truth. I’m not going B.S. people and say, ‘oh you’re so amazing, oh look at all you can do, oh aren’t you wonderful!’ if they aren’t.”
“I know, mom. Everyone knows that about you.”
“Well, that’s just who I am. I’m not a compassionate person. I’m sorry, but people are going to have to accept that.”
“I know, mom,” I say, ironically showing my mother compassion.
And there you have it; Ada the Honesty Enforcer. If you ever want the most bare form of an opinion, you call Ada. But much like her recipe books, she has collected opinions after opinions that no one has a use for anymore (or ever). Moving might do Ada some good too. After all, there are some things you should take with you and there are some thing you should just throw away… by the bag-full.
