By JIM HUNT
With all the snow and rain these past several weeks, my son’s basement flooded and about six inches of water came in through the foundation. It was a mess. Boxes of memories and bags of clothes became little more than soggy reminders of times gone by. After pumping out the water, we tried to figure out what had happened and what should be done about it.
I tried to offer a little fatherly wisdom, which mostly means saying calm-sounding things while staring at a wet box and hoping nobody asks you where the water is actually coming from.
The flood did what time, reason, and common sense had failed to do. It forced a discussion about what should be saved and what should finally be thrown away.
Most of us are terrible at this.
We live in a world where people pay monthly rent to store things they do not want, do not need, and in some cases could not identify in a police lineup. Our attics and basements are full of items we have not touched in years but apparently cannot live without.
Take the jeans from high school. Somewhere in the back of many closets is a pair of pants being kept alive by pure delusion. We tell ourselves that one day we might get back into them, despite a steady adult diet of biscuits, gravy, donuts, and wishful thinking.
Then there is the treadmill. In theory, it is exercise equipment. In practice, it is the most expensive shelf in the house.
And let us not forget the box of CDs, the stack of VHS tapes, and the 27-volume Encyclopedia Britannica, all carefully preserved in case the internet collapses and somebody suddenly needs to know the exports of Belgium in 1974.
Some things are easy to laugh about. Others are not. Uncle Fred’s bowling trophies may be tarnished and missing a plaque, but they still make you smile. That silver cookie platter from shop class may not be worth anything to anybody else, but it reminds you of your mother making chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen.
That is the problem with stuff. Half of it is junk, and the other half is memory wearing a dust cover.
We are not really keeping the objects. We are keeping what they represent. The old jacket is youth. The platter is family. The trophies are Uncle Fred in a loud shirt, grinning like he just won the PBA championship.
Still, there comes a time when life asks us to make a decision. What matters enough to keep? What are we honestly going to use? And what are we hanging onto simply because we hate the idea of letting go?
Sometimes a flooded basement makes the decision for us. We pick up a soggy cardboard box and realize that life has a rude but effective way of helping us declutter.
Those are decisions we do not want to make.
But maybe that is part of growing older and wiser. We begin to understand that not everything meaningful has to be stored in a bin, stacked on a shelf, or hidden in the basement. Some things are worth keeping. Some are worth remembering. And some, like those high school jeans, need to go with dignity.
