While Crying in the Laundromat, I Take Stock

In a box in a box in a room we never used
(though it had several names: Pat’s room; the governess’s room; Jane Eyre’s room; the cold, dark heart of the house)
Are a big bunch of tapes.
Audiotapes.
Cassette tapes.
Plain gray.
Or grey.
No, gray.
No paper labels on them.

They aren’t mine. They never were.
Pat made them.
Patricia.
My mother called her Patricia, to avoid confusing her with all the other Pats in the family.
And she went by many of the other diminutives for Patricia;
Her family called her Patty.
But when I met her, she was Pat, and that was the only shortening of her name I ever used.
(We had other nicknames for each other that had nothing to do with our names.)

The tapes, these tapes I’m obsessing over because they are small, tangible things that I can do something with, these tapes were made before we met, but not long before. Dark Shadows, a show we loved independently from each other, aired for a short time in the months just before we met.

I taped them too.

My tapes were messy and either not labeled or labeled with an obsessive attention to detail. I’ve thrown them away without mercy or regret.
Hers contain the necessary information in a small (but not yet microscopic) and still-clear hand.
They represent hours of her time; hours of her life; hours of her joy.

I’ve been counseled to put them in the trash.


But there are many things I’m supposed to put in the trash.


The new rule is that less is more. I would be happier, I would be undepressed, if only I could rid myself of my things and live in a shoebox.


The new rule is to destroy everything that doesn’t bring you joy.
But so many things bring me joy. I have a whole candy box full of things that bring me joy.

Let me tell you the story of the pseudo origami bird.

One day I was walking past the cubicle of the woman who sat next to me, and under the conveyor between us I saw
a magenta
origami
bird.

For several days I looked at it.

It made me happy.

I wasn’t sure why it was there, but it made me happy.

Then one day, one other day, I looked at it more closely.

It was magenta and
It was paper but
It was not a bird.

It was a crumpled post-it note with enough bird-like qualities to fly past the waste basket and have a life on the floor.

I rescued it, and it now lives on my desk.

It is a crumpled post-it note, created with no intention.

It brings me joy.


And then there’s this.

I used to have a relationship with a creamer at Pier One.

Pat and I loved Pier One, back when there was a Pier One to go to,
Back when Pier One was fun.
And there was a creamer there—there were two of them.
One was shaped like a cow.
That was the one Pat favored.
The other wasn’t shaped like anything other than a creamer, but its shape was so elegant, every time I went in, I had to hold it in my hands.

We never bought it.
We had no need, we never used cream for anything, certainly not coffee.
But I miss that creamer.

It brought me joy.

I’m living in the wrong world.
This disposable society makes my heart hurt. I want to deconstruct the trash,
Sort it,
Send it where it can be composted
Upcycled
Washed
Mended
Recycled.

Throwing away things other people can use makes me hurt in the parts of me that my father passed along.

The things that give me joy are not trash,
But they are also nothing.
Nothing anybody else wants.


There is a real thing and it is happening to me.

I keep getting the message that it's time for me to go, but I’m not ready yet.