Forty Year Old Canned Fruit, and a Word of Advice

There's a fruit cellar in the basement of our old house in Redford, right at the foot of the stairs. My father in law bought the property in 1949 when the neighborhood was nothing more than a large apple orchard, being sold off in parcels for eventual development. For two years he had his own little farm on the land, selling the fruits and vegetables he harvested from the trunk of his car to his co-workers at the Chrysler Assembly Plant in downtown Detroit. In 1952, he built the house, and I imagine that adding a basement fruit cellar was a big priority in the planning. My father in law was a farmer through and through, so like a photographer needs a darkroom or a dancer needs a barre and mirror, he needed a fruit cellar to contain the "fruits" of his labors. I always hated that fruit cellar. When my in-laws moved out and we moved in, they left behind a number of useful things...like appliances and furniture, stuff all newlyweds need and are happy to have provided for them. But they also left behind a lot of junk, stuff we couldn't get rid of while they were living, and by the time they died we were too busy or too tired to care about it. Over the 37 years we lived there, naturally we added our own stuff to the mix. In the fruit cellar, along with odd assortments of dishware, some old easter baskets with fake grass spilling out, an ancient rotary telephone, and some musty books, there were still a few jars of fruit my mother in law had canned sitting on the top shelf, the year it was placed there scrawled underneath in my father-in-law's handwriting.

During this past week the entire remaining contents of our old house have been removed. The upstairs rooms were mostly cleared already, but the basement and garage - repositories of six decades worth of stuff - are now completely empty.

Including the fruit cellar.

Over the past few months I've completed a major purge of our possessions, paring down the contents of two homes to fit into one 1900 square foot condominium. It's not been easy, but is HAS been incredibly freeing. I literally feel 100 pounds lighter without the burden of all that STUFF.

Don't get me wrong, it was difficult as hell to get rid of things that were an integral part of your life for almost four decades. How to decide which of your child's school papers and drawings to keep and which to toss? How to choose which paintings from the walls will work in the new house? How to grapple with the fact that your circa 1973 stereo equipment is worth more (financially) than your baby grand piano?

Since I turned 50, I've had a real sea change in my feelings about possessions. No longer  do I crave the latest fashion in clothes, or a purse to match every pair of shoes. I'm don't care about souvenir coffee cups from the places I visit. It doesn't matter if I have different placemats for every season, or a different teapot for every day of the week. I have moved out of the collecting phase of my life and into the dispersing stage, knowing that as we age, we need less and less to survive, and that possessions are not what make us happy.

As I went through everything we owned, picking and choosing what to keep, the things that consistently ended up in the Save piles were photographs, jewelry, and books.

Photographs are obvious - they capture moments in time, moments that were obviously important enough to preserve. They reflect the essence of people at all stages of their lives. They are incredibly meaningful to me.

My relationship with jewelry goes back to preschool days when I asked for a ring for my 5th birthday. My uncle bought me a tiny gold ring with and aquamarine stone in it. I wore it all the time, loved seeing it on my chubby little finger while I typed stories on the old Smith Corolla in the attic. I developed a nervous habit of taking it off and chewing it, so the band is slightly dented in the back, making it uncomfortable to wear.

Yes, I still have it, and it does fit on my baby finger.

As for books- you all know how I feel about books. But I will say that I must have donated 200 books to the library over the past six months. But I also saved out a selection of children's books that belonged to my son during his lifetime, books that I've begun to pass on to my grandson, who is a true bookworm just like has grandma.

So for those of you who are still in the collecting phase, my advice to you is start thinking about what really matters in your life, what are the things you want to carry into old age with you. Will it be trendy outfits or cute figurines from the gift shop? Will you find smoothie makers and cupcake makers and coffeemakers to be essential to the life you want to live?

Or will it be things that have memory and meaning attached, things that evoke a person, time, or place, things that reflect who you've become and how you got there?

Certainly 40 year old canned fruit doesn't fit into any of those categories.

Porch Sitting

A British porch is a musty, forbidding non-room in which to fling a sodden umbrella or a muddy pair of boots; a guard against the elements and strangers. By contrast the good ol' American front porch seems to stand for positivity and openness; a platform from which to welcome or wave farewell; a place where things of significance could happen.
Dan Stevens 

Summer nights like this evoke memories of sitting on our front porch, eavesdropping on grownup conversation, and feeling very special. Those were quiet and happy times for me, a feeling of comfort and relaxation I still seek.

Join me on the front porch in this post at Medium. 

Change of Scene

Something I learned when we moved last fall - a change of scenery can be inspiring and invigorating. When Deb Smouse, friend and Life Coach extraordinaire, starting contributing to Medium (a new concept in writing networks that's still in the beta stage) I was intrigued.

When I received an invitation to post there myself, I decided to give it a try. My first piece is here - I'd love to have you visit, and if you like it, click the green "recommend" button to let me know you've been by.

A new writing space.

A fresh spring morning.

What's not to like?

The Sunday Salon: Mother's Day Between the Covers

...of books, I mean. Although it's so cold and windy here, I'm sorely tempted to crawl back under my coziest blanket and stay there for the day. Oh spring, whither for art thou? Although I didn't plan it, I'm in the midst of a book about mothers and daughters. The book is One True Thing, Anna Quindlen's 1994 novel that describes the multi-faceted relationship between 24 year old Ellen Gulden and her mother, Kate. When Kate is diagnosed with advanced cancer, Ellen's father insists that she quit her job and come home to care for her mother, the quintessential homemaker and family touchstone -their "one true thing." But Ellen has always placed herself akin with her father in the family dynamic - the intellectual, high achiever. Initially, she is resentful and afraid  - she has no idea how to play the role of caregiver, the one her mother has always embraced so masterfully. Yet as the days and weeks pass Ellen changes, and reassesses her preconceptions about her mother, her parent's marriage, and the choices she has made for her own life.

Because I'm a huge fan of Quindlen's work - both her fiction, her memoir, and her journalism - I know there are autobiographical elements to this novel. I know that her own mother died from ovarian cancer, know that Quindlen's father called her home from college to care for her mother during her final illness. But  knowing Quindlen has woven bits and pieces of her own experience into the fabric of this story just makes the novel all the more interesting and touching. The mother-daughter relationship in One True Thing is so poignant, and I love watching the subtle ways that Kate uses this final opportunity to teach Ellen some things about valuing herself as a woman.

I started thinking about some of my of favorite contemporary novels that deal with the mother-daughter relationship. Mary Gordon's Men and Angels came to mind immediately.  I first read it back in the early 80's, but I re-read it about every five years because it's so powerful and affecting to me. It explores that age-old question - how does a mother satisfy her own need to be creative and productive, to have her own life,  while still providing the best care for her children?

Another favorite is Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club, which looks at the way a mother's cultural history affects her expectations for her daughters. I've always loved this novel  (and the movie adaptation), and when it was first published most of us in the western hemisphere knew very little about Chinese culture. It was intriguing to look at the mother-daughter dynamic through the eyes of eastern history and culture.

How about you? Do you have a favorite novel or memoir about motherhood?

Do share.

If you're interested in reading further -  a bibliography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Contemporary Fiction from the University of Delaware.

Wedded Bliss

You know what I remember most about my wedding day?

Not my surprise at how many people had packed into the white wooden pews of the historic chapel. Not the moment of panic when my about-to-be husband dropped the wedding ring onto the floor in the middle of the ceremony. Not even the annoying wedding  photographer who kept insisting we smear wedding cake over each other's faces.

No, the memory that stands out most clearly from that day, the one I return to when I want/need to recall the butterflies in my stomach that accompany young love, is a moment later that evening as we drove to our  honeymoon in Toronto. We stopped at a small convenience store, a tiny, cramped little place, the ceiling-high shelves jam packed with everything from soup to shaving cream. I don't remember why we stopped, what "convenience" we needed. But I was alone at the front counter after making my purchase, peering around the overflowing shelves to see where Jim might have wandered off to.

"Is there something else you need?" the clerk asked me.

"No," I replied, "I'm just looking for my husband."

And with the utterance of that word - husband - a shiver I can still feel ran through my body. What a momentous word, heavy with portent and responsibility. Saying it for the first time plucked me from girlhood and instantly, ready or not, plopped me down into womanhood. It was a word that meant I was grown up, with a grown up relationship and responsibilities.

Thirty seven years later, having now said the word thousands of times, I'll admit it isn't always accompanied by a flurry of girlish excitement. When you live with someone your entire adult life, you learn more about them then is probably good for any two people to know about each other. But familiarity doesn't have to breed contempt. My husband's oh-so-familiar habits and attitudes are usually more comforting than contemptuous. Sure, like most wives I complain about the snoring, the TV, the long showers and short conversations. And he still wanders off when we're shopping and I have to look around for him after I'm done.

But mostly I'm thankful that we've turned out to be as compatible as we thought we would be when we took joined our lives together 37 years ago today. Like that little convenience store on the 401 in Windsor, we've stocked the shelves of our relationship with everything imaginable until they're filled to overflowing.

I picked a really good husband. I hope I get to call him that for another 37 years at least.