The other night, I was at a friend’s house trying to describe my family’s mild (and in some cases, not so mild) varieties of hoarding. Emily Rose summed it up perfectly:
“Daddy hoards big things like cars and boats. I hoard clothes. Mommy hoards papers.”
I really do hoard papers. In my hometown, there is a rather well-known mentally ill man named Tommy who walks around downtown. He’s quite a character. When I was growing up, Tommy always had papers coming out of his pant and jacket pockets. At one point, one of my mom’s friends worked at a bank downtown, and accompanied Tommy to his safety deposit box. When he opened it up, she noted that Tommy’s safety deposit box contained a LOT of what she called “giblets of paper.”
Like Tommy, I have a LOT of giblets.
I saved one magazine article from the early 90s by one of my favorite writers, Spike Gillespie, that is so wrinkled and creased you can hardly read it. My plan is to have Spike sign it before it disintegrates. I have almost every single ticket stub from every concert and event I’ve attended, and just in the past few months finally put them all in a ticket album so that one day when I’m dead and gone, my kids can see that I lived an extremely weird life when it comes to concerts – I’ve seen everyone from Duran Duran to Pavarotti (thank God I saved the stub because I’d weirdly forgotten I saw him live) to Al Stewart, the guy who sang “Year of the Cat,” a song you all know you love so just admit it already.
Just recently, I gathered up and mailed a stack of laminated papers to my high school sweetheart that I’d been storing in a folder since 1991. I credit the laminating to my mother, because I’ve never had the patience to laminate things. In the same box, I also mailed his class ring. I’ve been weirdly hanging on to that thing for decades! Who does that?
Over the past few months I’ve been attempting to tackle the giblets, and during that process, which is incredibly difficult as I get caught up in what my mom calls the “la la las,” I started sorting things by topic. I quickly filled a plastic shoe box with blank postcards, and thought about donating them, but so many of them are so cool that I didn’t part with them. I put the box to the side to deal with later.
This summer, my sister Emily and I stayed with our parents in Tyler for several days. We had late leisurely breakfasts where we ate Mom’s delicious homemade plum jelly on toast. Mom and Emily and I stayed up until the wee hours drinking wine and telling stories. It was a rich experience that when Emily went home, I decided to stay on for a few extra days and take the Amtrak back to Austin.
My stepfather James is 88, and a living national treasure. At this period in his life, routine is really important to him, and he wakes each morning, has his coffee, takes his medicine, and goes on a walk around the block. Without fail, he picks up a found object and draws it each day. His studio contains countless wired sketchbooks of his drawings and journals, as well as plenty of giblets of paper that my Mom helps keep organized as the papers drive her nuts.
While in Tyler, I watched James bring in the mail, another big part of his daily routine. He gets excited like a small child when mail arrives, and equally as small child disappointed when the mail isn’t fun.
“All we got today was one piece of junk mail,” he said, tossing an ugly flyer on the table and pouting.
With that, I had a lightbulb moment. The postcards are for James!
My initial plan was ambitious. I went straight to the post office without passing go and purchased a roll of postcard stamps. Postcard stamps are SO cheap! The plan was simple: I would send a postcard every day except Sunday. When I told my Mom this plan, I could feel the twitch in her eye over the phone.
“Maybe just a few times a week?” she asked. I imagined her thinking of her house filled to the brim with postcards. I also got a giggle out of the idea of offloading my giblets to someone else.
Starting in late July, I began sending James postcards. He doesn’t read as well as he did in his younger years, so Mom likely helps decipher my terrible handwriting. I’ve made sure to keep the messages brief. I like to think that when James goes to the mailbox and finds a postcard addressed with his name on it, he’s happy. I also like to think that my mom gets to have a nice moment with James, looking at whatever cool postcard arrived that day. That, or she reads the cards then takes them straight to the shredder. Who knows?
Today, for you, a challenge. Is there an older person in your life who might really enjoy some snail mail? If so, dig out your old unused postcards and make someone’s day. At the very least, move some giblets out of your space and see how it makes you feel.
If you start the post card project, please share your experience with me, using the hashtag #postcardrevival. I’d love to revive the practice of sending snail mail. Show me what you’ve got!
xoxo
Amy
