Memory Lane
For a couple of weeks or more I've been on a de clutter campaign. This was prompted by the suspicion that we have bed bugs. I still haven't found any actual bugs, casings, stains, or eggs, but one morning I woke up with four bug bites and found tiny black specks on my sheets and that was enough to set me into war mode. I've only had a single bite on 3 occasions since, and my DH only one, so I know we aren't infested but I'm doing everything I can to keep that from happening.
One thing I've learned is that bed bugs will invade a squeaky clean house just as quickly as they will invade a messy one. Having BBs is not an indication of bad housekeeping. However, if your house is cluttered you do create a lot of safe havens for BBs to hide. Now I'm not a great house keeper. I was raised in a very sterile and super clean environment and I've never wanted my home to feel that cold and sterile. It's a home - not a hospital. But I do try to keep a modicum of functionality at the same time, so it's clean enough to be healthy, messy enough to be happy.
This house do not look anything like an episode of "Hoarders" but I do fight with a tendency to hang onto things and paper is my biggest area of weakness. I do suffer from OCD which is mostly in remission now, but it does still manifest some here and there. It's been a habit all my adult life to save everything paper. Some of it is excusable because you should save things like tax records, but I go overboard and have saved cancelled checks back to the early 90s as well as utility bills and receipts for purchases and product warranties and manuals years after I no longer have the item. Additonally I save cards and letters and photos and journals. The later form the worst of my hoarding. I had stacks of shoeboxes filled with these dating back for 20 years, spilling out of my closet and beginning to line the walls of my bedroom. Those boxes have been something I've been going to get around to for many years. Now with this BB threat it's got to be now.
Recently I saw an episode of Hoarders about a family that had a bed bug problem. Ironically this was not long before I discovered that we have the problem ourselves. In the case study on A&E the dad was the hoarder. There were two or three kids in the family. They had discovered BBs had infested them, but they could not deal with the problem themselves or have professionals treat the house because of the hoard. The BBs had gotten so bad that the family had actually resorted to moving out into the yard and sleeping in pup tents! The dad thought this might solve the problem by starving the bugs out. He didn't know they can last for up to a year without feeding. The problem wasn't going away and the weather was getting colder and they couldn't camp out much longer. I don't remember how that episode ended, but it certainly came flooding back to mind when I made my discovery and decided I had to tackle my mini hoard
Progress has been slow. I had about 18 boxes and have only gotten down by two. I find it impossible to just dump the contents into a trash bad without going through them, and in going through them I'm opening up time capsules of all kinds of memories. Some good - some bad.
So far I haven't been able to throw out a single letter or card from my son. His letters have been all I have had of him for the last 16 plus years that he has been incarcerated.
But there has been a little healing and closure in this process. I came across a letter that was about 15 years old. It was from one of my son's girlfriends. It included pictures of a three year old girl who I had been led to believe was my granddaughter. I had never had actual contact with the child, but not for want of trying. I had tried to make a connection with her and assure her mother that this didn't have to involve my son at all since she was extremely resentful of him and didn't want any part of him in her life. He had wanted very much to be a part of his daughter's life, but this young woman barred him from that from the moment the child was born. The letter I had saved was a response to my having made a giant teddy bear for my grand daughter. I had also inquired about her favorite toys, colors, and all that so that I might at least send her more gifts and such for birthdays and so on. The letter was very polite, but the mom was suspicious of me and not wanting me in the child's life because for one thing I would be difficult to explain. The little girl had not been told who her daddy was. Actually, she had been told that her maternal grandfather and grandmother were her mommy and daddy, and that God thought her to be such a special child that he had given her two mommies.
After receiving that letter I stopped trying to contact them in anyway until the following Christmas when I sent a Christmas card to the child with some money enclosed. The mom called me the day after Christmas and told me finally that she had lied about my son being the father of this child. It was in fact another man she'd dated just before my son. She didn't want that guy in her life either, so when she found out she was pregnant she just let my son and her parents believe that it was his. This made a lot of sense and explained the way she had acted over the years. The photos of the little girl revealed absolutely zero resemblance to my son, but sometimes that happens.
Unearthing this old pain renewed it and I realized that it was not healthy to hang on to thinks like this that stirred up bad memories. But I was inspired to try to look this woman and/or her daughter on Facebook and I found them both immediately. Although her wall and such can't be seen unless you are her "friend" (and I certainly am no that) she does have her photo albums open to the public and through them, and her daughter's I was able to see the story of their lives. This child is now 18 and in her senior year of high school. The family is very close knit and it appears that she has had a good and happy life to date. But again, and even more now that she is grown, there is not even the tiniest indication that she is my granddaughter. And seeing this and seeing that no matter who her parents are she has a good life - gave me closure and peace. No need to save any of this.
And so it goes. I'm trying work on this task for at least an hour daily. There's lots of "neutral" stuff that's easy to toss, but there are other things - like cards from my best friend who died in 2006 - that are much harder. So I'm going through once to get rid of as much "easy" stuff as I can, and then I'll go through again.
One thing I've learned is that bed bugs will invade a squeaky clean house just as quickly as they will invade a messy one. Having BBs is not an indication of bad housekeeping. However, if your house is cluttered you do create a lot of safe havens for BBs to hide. Now I'm not a great house keeper. I was raised in a very sterile and super clean environment and I've never wanted my home to feel that cold and sterile. It's a home - not a hospital. But I do try to keep a modicum of functionality at the same time, so it's clean enough to be healthy, messy enough to be happy.
This house do not look anything like an episode of "Hoarders" but I do fight with a tendency to hang onto things and paper is my biggest area of weakness. I do suffer from OCD which is mostly in remission now, but it does still manifest some here and there. It's been a habit all my adult life to save everything paper. Some of it is excusable because you should save things like tax records, but I go overboard and have saved cancelled checks back to the early 90s as well as utility bills and receipts for purchases and product warranties and manuals years after I no longer have the item. Additonally I save cards and letters and photos and journals. The later form the worst of my hoarding. I had stacks of shoeboxes filled with these dating back for 20 years, spilling out of my closet and beginning to line the walls of my bedroom. Those boxes have been something I've been going to get around to for many years. Now with this BB threat it's got to be now.
Recently I saw an episode of Hoarders about a family that had a bed bug problem. Ironically this was not long before I discovered that we have the problem ourselves. In the case study on A&E the dad was the hoarder. There were two or three kids in the family. They had discovered BBs had infested them, but they could not deal with the problem themselves or have professionals treat the house because of the hoard. The BBs had gotten so bad that the family had actually resorted to moving out into the yard and sleeping in pup tents! The dad thought this might solve the problem by starving the bugs out. He didn't know they can last for up to a year without feeding. The problem wasn't going away and the weather was getting colder and they couldn't camp out much longer. I don't remember how that episode ended, but it certainly came flooding back to mind when I made my discovery and decided I had to tackle my mini hoard
Progress has been slow. I had about 18 boxes and have only gotten down by two. I find it impossible to just dump the contents into a trash bad without going through them, and in going through them I'm opening up time capsules of all kinds of memories. Some good - some bad.
So far I haven't been able to throw out a single letter or card from my son. His letters have been all I have had of him for the last 16 plus years that he has been incarcerated.
But there has been a little healing and closure in this process. I came across a letter that was about 15 years old. It was from one of my son's girlfriends. It included pictures of a three year old girl who I had been led to believe was my granddaughter. I had never had actual contact with the child, but not for want of trying. I had tried to make a connection with her and assure her mother that this didn't have to involve my son at all since she was extremely resentful of him and didn't want any part of him in her life. He had wanted very much to be a part of his daughter's life, but this young woman barred him from that from the moment the child was born. The letter I had saved was a response to my having made a giant teddy bear for my grand daughter. I had also inquired about her favorite toys, colors, and all that so that I might at least send her more gifts and such for birthdays and so on. The letter was very polite, but the mom was suspicious of me and not wanting me in the child's life because for one thing I would be difficult to explain. The little girl had not been told who her daddy was. Actually, she had been told that her maternal grandfather and grandmother were her mommy and daddy, and that God thought her to be such a special child that he had given her two mommies.
After receiving that letter I stopped trying to contact them in anyway until the following Christmas when I sent a Christmas card to the child with some money enclosed. The mom called me the day after Christmas and told me finally that she had lied about my son being the father of this child. It was in fact another man she'd dated just before my son. She didn't want that guy in her life either, so when she found out she was pregnant she just let my son and her parents believe that it was his. This made a lot of sense and explained the way she had acted over the years. The photos of the little girl revealed absolutely zero resemblance to my son, but sometimes that happens.
Unearthing this old pain renewed it and I realized that it was not healthy to hang on to thinks like this that stirred up bad memories. But I was inspired to try to look this woman and/or her daughter on Facebook and I found them both immediately. Although her wall and such can't be seen unless you are her "friend" (and I certainly am no that) she does have her photo albums open to the public and through them, and her daughter's I was able to see the story of their lives. This child is now 18 and in her senior year of high school. The family is very close knit and it appears that she has had a good and happy life to date. But again, and even more now that she is grown, there is not even the tiniest indication that she is my granddaughter. And seeing this and seeing that no matter who her parents are she has a good life - gave me closure and peace. No need to save any of this.
And so it goes. I'm trying work on this task for at least an hour daily. There's lots of "neutral" stuff that's easy to toss, but there are other things - like cards from my best friend who died in 2006 - that are much harder. So I'm going through once to get rid of as much "easy" stuff as I can, and then I'll go through again.
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