Things will get done in their time

It was a nice weekend, not too hot and not too cold. There was just enough rain for the plants and not enough to cause any problems.

I intended to finally get a coat of paint on the porch swing. Inertia took over and it didn’t get done. There was a time when I would have gotten irritated at myself. Those days are gone. It has taken me a lifetime to figure out that most of the things on my to-do lists are unimportant.

In the grand scheme of things, it does not matter to anyone but me whether the swing gets painted or not. 

In addition to not painting, the other thing I haven’t done is to continue tossing out things that I will never use again. This is made more difficult because much of what I choose to keep is tied up with memories. 

I have boxes of embroidered dresser scarves. They are beautifully done. There is only one problem. We don’t currently use a dresser for our things. The walk-in closet holds all of what used to be stored in a dresser or chest of drawers, making the dresser scarves obsolete. I can't throw them away or give them away as they were sewn by my mom or my grandmother. Keeping them is my way of keeping in touch with them. 

Then there are books. They are in almost every room of the house. They are even more difficult to throw away. When I pick them up I inevitably open them. Reading a page or two leads to reading for the next hour or so. It is like reconnecting with an old friend. 

It doesn’t matter if the pages are yellow or white. I may not see them often, but when I do it is hard to let them go again. I think that a sign of a good book is the ability to draw in a reader years after it was read for the first time.

One of these days it will be my relatives going through stuff. I’m sure that they will toss many of the things I hold dear, just like I did when my mom died. I wish I had saved more of her things, but at the end I couldn’t bear hauling one more thing home. 

In addition to the usual miscellany, there are envelopes upon envelopes of pictures. Unlike storing photographs on computers, printed pictures don’t disappear when programs change. The worst that happens is that the pictures can darken over time. I can get lost in old pictures as easily as I get lost in a book.

I try to make sure that most of the pictures are labeled. One of the best things I ever did was spending afternoons going through old pictures with my mom. She knew who was in most of them. If she didn’t remember them the first time, she might remember them the next time.

Sometimes I wonder if life would be easier with less stuff. The proliferation of storage units tells me that I am not the only one with too much stuff. Would our ancestors be surprised at the sheer amount of possessions we have today? 

One of these days I will get the amount of possessions under control. Until then, I have a swing to paint.