Recollections from the basement

Skinny skeleton keys taken away by the sellers, needed for sentimental reasons?
Comics stored away, forgotten, then re found. 
Doorknobs and old hardware tossed by my mother to make room,
scavenged by a passerby in the alley. Metal and fabric blinds tossed.
She thought them useless and old.
Steep stairs going down, the last one a doozy.

One time in the dark, I fell into a half a pig that still needed to be cut up.
The pull light was on the far side of that pig. My mother bought and transported half a cow, later cut into unrecognizable sections not matching those on any chart, often boiled.  My favorite part was the soft gelatinous oxtail cooked in a barley soup.  An uncle broke the marble counter cutting up the cow. A tall freezer packed full with white papered bundles.  The abundance made me feel safe as far as knowing where our next meaty dinner was coming from.

My little brothers set a phone book on fire, thankfully on the concrete floors, the blaze not reaching the wooden walls.  My screams and a bucket of water doused their enthusiasm.

The laundry room painted in a deep, chalky turquoise.  Matchbox hanging on the wall, with a decal of a little housewife merrily sweeping. A white Styrofoam floaty with a red horse's head, worn on a day I saw a giant silver fish jump high over the water on Lake Michigan. A sled for going down the hill at Humboldt Park. Charming old decals on the windows, a Dutch girl, a wooden potty chair, dresser, jars on the shelves. 

Wringer washer for a time in our kitchen, floral cozy sewn to measure, then in the basement.  Filled with hot soapy water, whites washed first, wrung out through the rollers, placed in first of 2 rinse waters in 2 compartment cement sink, rinsed and wrung out by hand  twice, hung up to dry on clotheslines outside if the weather was fair, or on the clotheslines in the "big" room in the basement near the water heaters.  Sometimes, outside, then inside, then outside again as the weather changed.  Drove me batty. Subsequent loads of colors, socks, then the dirtiest work clothes, water darkened and blackened with each load.  Washer chugged.  My brothers threw out the old washer in the 1980s and bought my mother a new one.  She regretted losing the wringer washer and the ability to reuse the same water for multiple loads.

A couple years ago, a man whose family owned the building before my parents, returned to visit.  He asked for a purple brick with lettering from the patio for remembrance.  His older, very frail friend took pictures with his Leica.  I was worried for him on the uneven steps in leading to the alley. 

Another, earlier time, my mother spoke to a stranger by the viaduct north of her house.  Turn out that his family lived there.  He sent her a picture of the house as it was during the Depression years.  A long-haired boy in a white shirt riding a tricycle was our visitor.  Showed the same stained glass window on the second floor.  Storefront with big windows, display of apple bins.  Proprietress in an apron, sitting in front.  a child skipping rope.  Very few, very bulky cars parked in front.  Most jobs were walking distance in factories.
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sweet smell of motor oil

I love old heavy office supplies like heavy metal staplers, staples,  tape dispensers, wooden or metal stacking bins for organizing, and, all metal, except for its rubber feet 3-hole punch.  Real heavy duty work horses. I love the paint finishes as well, thick, metallic grays, shimmering teals, sea glass greens. Like the saying goes they don't make them like that any more.  When I find them I keep them and treasure them.

 I was using a vintage, finished with teal gray metallic paint, 3-hole punch to put holes into Wisteria's school paper's.  Vintage punch, most likely 50 years old or older. Maybe the paper was the vertebrate one about Amazon parrots or the plant about tomatoes.  I was putting them in shiny plastic binders for her presentation.  I was being lazy, I suppose, and putting through several sheets at a time along with the plastic binder sleeve  when the punch jammed.  It was no longer clamping down.

I put it under a fluorescent light so that I could see the works.  I'm not mechanically inclined but thought I could find the offending paper or plastic circles. I turned over the Mutual Centamatic Punch, No. 300, Made in Worchester, Mass U.S.A. I slipped and lifted off the long rectangular piece that held the harvested dots, shook it empty, still the center piston?/stamper? and it's attendant spring wasn't pushing downward.  I lifted it close to my face and myopic eyes peered over my eye glasses frame into the little holes, I caught a whiff of a familiar smell from long ago. Using a pointy steak knife I extracted several shiny plastic discs that had been jamming up the works.  I was so very happy that to have solved that real and vexing problem.

I brought the punch to my face again, to my nose, and took a deep inhale of motor oil.  Faint, old, nostalgic, and so familiar.  My father was a machinist in the 1960's when small manufacturers dotted our neighborhood.  The dads and some moms would walk down the block, around the corner to work.  When my father returned from work the aroma of motor oil infused his flannel shirts and dungarees.  The fragrance brought back memories of eagerly hugging him hello and brought tears to my eyes.

 

letting go

 Letting go is hard to do. Can't do it.  

I heard a report that a darling friend referred to my apartment as cluttered.  Her son, a collector like me, called it cluttered with wonderful things. Once I helped him carry a teak dining table into their house from the alley. He asked me to keep an eye out for solid wood bookcases.  She tosses things out wholesale, can't stand a mishmash of items on a counter.  Tossed out pencils, Lego pieces from expensive sets in a younger son's Lego museum.  Of course, she'll be buying pencils again soon enough.  Her husband saved a hefty gift check enclosed in a card from the bin. In my mind, if you save what you already have, then you will be prepared for the eventual possibility and probability of future need. A full pantry is insurance against famine.  Favorite books can be read with equal gusto the third time around. Unread books can be stored up for the cold winter ahead. Photos and letters contain precious memories.

It hurts too much to make decisions about what to keep and what to let go, and where to let it go to. I'm going through boxes and bags of collected stacks of papers, small slips of paper, Christmas cards from friends, ATM receipts, scrawled telephone numbers, son's artwork (on every paper he's ever touched). Bundles cleared off the table, put out of sight for another day. Pulled out old newspapers, compelling articles and picture sacrificed to the recycling bin, sight unseen.  That I could do. Filled shopping bags with unsolicited credit card come ons destined for community shredding event in September.  That I could do.

Any piece of paper with my mother's writing saved, a limited edition collector's item.  She started printing communications to me when I went away to college, after I confessed I had a hard time reading her cramped handwriting, a habit developed to save on paper. She has outlasted many of the ladies of her generation on her block, in her neighborhood. Sifted through and saved are her homework help for Clement, notes detailing ingredients of soup she deposited into our refrigerator, notes penciled into vintage Christmas cards. Penciled so that we have the option of erasing her marks and reusing cards.  Cards she purchased at church rummage sale donated by other ladies who had saved them for many years. Once she gave me a happy mother's day to my dear aunt card, this after her last auntie died, she could not hope to use it anymore. 

My mother has pitched out scores of vintage doorknobs, hardware from the basement into cans in the alley in an effort to declutter.  She worries about our having to sort through things after she's gone.  Had I known about her plan I certainly would have asked her to pass them on to me.  My only "consolation" is that a dumpster diver fished them out.

Many papers triggered flashbacks, good trips down memory lane.  Clement's detailed, complicated, funny artwork of forests, treasure maps, traps without escape hatches, changeable aliens, letters to Santa with priceless misspellings. A few year's worth to compile into sleeves and big binders.  An unpleasant chill runs through me as I realize our big empty binders have been donated away.

A printed out e-mail from adoption agency shortly before we traveled to get Wisteria.  It details her height, weight in Metric with my husband's conversions into feet and inches.  How is it that she grew all that muscle and bone in the time she's been with us?  How is it that Clement wore that tiny bib?

I remember things that I've thrown away and regretted.  A pencil drawing that smudged.  Haunting portraits bought at garage sale that acquired a moldy smell in the basement.  Painted by a lady who passed away.  Sold by her husband for a quarter apiece.  He kept only the one she painted of her son.
A charmingly painted tin train that came with my childhood home.  I smashed it with a brick to see what would happen.  I threw it away to hide the evidence of my destructiveness.  That was the same year I washed my hair with toothpaste and trimmed my bangs away into a mini crewcut.  Sadness and regret all around.

Surrounded by boxes,  flood of memories washed over me.  A shakiness, a tremor, a minor earthquake throwing me off balance.  Trying to sort out my present looking into the past.  Motion sickness. Pull over to the side of the road. Disorientation.  A few deep breaths, resolution to put off to a future day when circumstances are different.  Decide to join my children in the present moment.  Watch a movie, play, eat.  Put a lid on each box, firmly now, stack in a pile behind a door that locks, walk away. Put off till tomorrow what you can't do today.