atlas...

I've been sorting through things. When your mortality is in front of you like mine is you begin to conjure up ideas of people going through your stuff. This haunts me. I think of diet journals or (worse) personal journals - oh God... not those. My innnnner thoughts to be exposed to the grandchildren. Noooooo.

Then there are books. Books tell people exactly who you are which (at times) is a little scary. I love books and really can't have enough of them. Sad thing is: my mother loved books too and I ended up with all of hers as well. I get in my moods for clearing out and in those times Goodwill has a eureka moment because of the beautiful things I give away. And it isn't just the books.

This has had an upside and a downside. My house is pleasantly calm in its lack of clutter but (downside) I had a moment and gave away my mother's four-poster mahogany bed and Queen Anne desk to my handyman. No regrets, but I do need to get a grip and think a little bit more before I do these things.

A few years back, I gave away my record player (regret) and with it, all of my Beatles albums (bigger regret). With digital mania these things just clutter up my house (& my mind) and enough IS enough. My son, Jake, was furious about the Beatles and so I just buy them back from eBay one by one and (little white lie) tell him... "look what I found in the attic, honey." I am truly the queen bee of bullshit.

Clearly, I can't be trusted.

It's like when my daughter (my fourth) asks me about herself as a baby. I make it up. I have absolutely no memory of her, but just that she was this curly-haired darling on my hip during ball games, amusement park visits, beach trips, hikes in the woods, grocery store treks and generally anywhere else her three older brothers needed to go. I meant to be a good mother but I don't remember much. I tried. God knows I tried.

I was more crazy over table manners... but that is because I am my mother's daughter. And with that comes the decision today of which atlas to keep because even though I can find the Republic of Uzbekistan on Google,  Im kind of happy to have my atlas to hold and to look it up the old-fashioned way. My grandchildren won't even know what an atlas is.

Ah, this new age of no books. All the shelves in the future generations will be filled with Pottery Barn fartifacts giving the illusion of having traveled. It is a different world now and I find myself hanging on to the old by a little bitty thread. One day, my grandchildren might run across the atlas and know that it was mine.

I think I am going to go put my name in the front of it right now . I'll tell them it was a 50th birthday present from *President Karimov from Uzbekistan.

* Google.



to Rachel:

In my life, there is no one compared to you.