HItchhiker's Guide to our Attic

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Attic In two weeks Lisa and Matt are moving to San Francisco for their great adventure. This means many things: they will indeed have wonderful adventures, they will be warm while we freeze in New England, we will miss them unbelievably, and finally, the contents of our attic will increase yet again. It seems that no matter where my children travel, they never forget these touching words: be it ever so humble there’s no place like mom and dad’s attic to store stuff. As I’ve said before, there are nights when I lie in bed gazing at the ceiling wondering when the attic will crash down on our heads. It’s not a thought conducive to sleep. The attic runs along the entire length of our house. On one side the former owner created a separate area to serve as his work space. This is the room that is currently filled to the top with my daughters’ various moves and adventuring, beginning with college. The rest of the space holds their childhood in plastic containers—every last beanie baby, little pony, and Fisher-Price-everything. King Tut would have been found in even better condition if he had been encased in some of the Rubbermaid products that I have invested in. I should have bought stock in that company years ago. Every few years when I go “attic-crazy” my daughters make a half-hearted attempt to throw out some of their precious memorabilia. The problem is that as they unpack each box they say things like, “Oh my God I forgot I had this!” You would think that if you have completely forgotten you had something it would be easy to throw out, yes? But evidently not since as my daughters clutch their newly found treasure they plead piteously, “But Mom it’s part of my childhood!” Well so was chickenpox but you don’t see me holding on to that! Last month we hired a contractor to do some repairs. When we asked him about the condition of our shed he said that he would have to demolish it and build a new one. He told us that part of the expense would be renting a dumpster to hold the old shed. He stopped when he saw the beatific look on my face. “Are you serious?” I asked him. “You’re not playing with me?” I told him that for years I’ve dreamt of renting a dumpster to hold all the stuff in my house that I’m dying to toss. “That’s funny,” he answered. “That’s the usual reaction I get from women when I tell them that!” I might just write a book entitled, “Fifty Shades of Crap” to cash in on this dumpster fantasy. Anyway, when Lisa asked if there was room to store some of their furniture in the attic I thought she was joking. The only reason that we have no squirrels up there is simply because there is no room! Seeing the incredulous look on my face she added, “I mean I would clean out some of my old things before I put anything else up there!” I told her that if she was serious I would happily help her with the attic project. Ironically, if there’s anything I love more than shopping it’s throwing stuff out! To my surprise last week-end Lisa made good on her promise. While I relaxed downstairs reading the Sunday paper I could hear her moving things around, dropping boxes and occasionally talking to herself. After a couple of hours she came down to tell us that she had most of her stuff in piles and could we help her get it down? When I went up I came face to face with yet another of our children’s crazes: 3-D puzzles. Mariel has always been the best puzzler of the family--the harder the better. So when she discovered these 3-D concoctions in middle school her eyes lit up. For the next couple of years she built, with Steve’s help, the Empire State Building, The White House, Notre Dame Cathedral, The Taj Mahal, Lower Manhattan complete with the World Trade Center, and various European castles some of which even lit up. And of course once she built them I couldn’t bear to take them apart so they were displayed—everywhere. Once she went off to college though we moved them up to the attic, where they gave the room a bit of class and a creepy abandoned-city feeling. I volunteered to take them all apart and put them back in their boxes for some future puzzler. So there I sat on the living room floor, deconstructing all of those landmarks, vacuuming the various bugs that had moved in, and shoving thousands of puzzle pieces into Ziplock bags. But when I came to the World Trade Center I just couldn’t do it. It was so incredibly complex and I simply didn’t like the feeling of destroying the towers all over again. So I dusted them off and took them back up to the attic to rule in solitary splendor. I must admit, I was impressed with Lisa’s work. The space looked better than it had in a long time—like a whole new galaxy. We should probably draw up a guide so in the future we know exactly what to throw out without having to search through everything again. After all—that dumpster won’t be here forever.