Through the Cracks #6: Endings and Beginnings
Today, something a little a different...it is, after all, a new year. Usually in this space I offer a photo of something that speaks to me, that scatters trails of breadcrumbs for me to follow along the road of better understanding, a photo that I hope might do the same for you. I’m doing the same today, in a way, but today I am intentionally calling on that most classic of writing workshop prompts, asking myself, the writer to use a simple, common, household object as the starting place for my words. And this one will not fit in the grab bag that I use when leading a retreat!
For the teacher, the goal in this exercise is to pick a grouping of common-enough elements so that any one of them might trigger a memory or an emotion in the hands of the writer – a pencil, a hairbrush, a coffee cup, a handkerchief. Any of these items can invoke a whiff of the past, a scent of a grandmother long gone, a memory of times together in the kitchen, an unexpected goodbye. All of these things become fodder for the kind of short essay that opens the flood gates to so many words about the humanness of living.
My Writing Assignment
Today, as my inspiration object, I have an object from my daily life. This is a picture of an inherited piece, my grandmother’s bedroom bureau. You see before you a somewhat sad, aging, piece of inexpensive furniture, its honeyed finish long ago turned to orange, its mirror stand broken and that mirror beyond repair, with squeaky and sticking drawers, handles missing, and more wobbly on its legs than sturdy. You see it here, emptied and stripped of adornment and readied for donation to Goodwill. You see it at the beginning of a journey that will end either in the dump or in the hands of someone else who will paint it and love it and give it new life.
I don’t get to know the end of its story. My relationship with this piece of well-loved, well-used, and maybe abused furniture ends here, as I declutter and re-arrange and repurpose so many things at this start of 2023 while I prepare for the renovation work that finally begins next a week. And the reason that this one object makes a most excellent writing prompt for me is that, in its tiny chips of wood, in its silhouette against the worn blue floor, there is embodied past, and present, with hints at beginnings yet to come.
My first memory of this dresser comes from my ancient past, when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. I was visiting my beloved Aunt Rene (Irene, really) at her home “downtown” in Kansas City. I was there to do something completely new – I was going to sleep over at her house. I had never been anywhere without my parents, my parents who held me closer than close, in the grip of grief in those years following my brother’s death in a car accident. I remember being so excited to be there and running up the stairs to the very top bedroom in Aunt Rene’s house, the room where I was supposed to sleep that night. This was the house that Aunt Rene had shared for so many years with her mother, my father’s mother, my grandmother, a large laughing woman of whom I had only the fewest of memories. I remember my first sight of this dresser: it was just inside the door, lodged against a tiny wall between that door and the door to the attic stairs. It was covered with doilies and bottles of things I that I didn’t understand, perfumes and lotions, things my mother did not have. It offered a glimpse of a life I did not know. And I remember seeing that beautiful unknown thing, this dresser with all its contents, and thinking that at last I was on a great adventure.
Long Endings
That night’s visit didn’t end well. I had to be retrieved by my father in what felt to my child-self like the middle of the night. I never tried to stay over at Aunt Rene’s again, nor anywhere else until long after I was an adult. I wasn’t yet prepared for the adventure that Aunt Rene, with her single woman’s life of travel and work, represented to me. But many years later, after her move from that old house in the middle of the city to one closer to my parents’ suburban ranch, after Aunt Rene had left us, that dresser came to live with me. For many years I loved it and moved it from apartment to apartment to house, I loved it and used it, and saw it every day. I struggled, and continue to struggle, to find and understand that sense of adventure that Aunt Rene offered me, that night and so many other days we shared together.
And then, about three years ago, I looked at it and said, it is time for you to go to another home. Three years, you say? Why is it just now going to a new home? Maybe it took three years to actually say goodbye. It took circumstances and need and the call of new life to move this pile of wood, this rock of memories, this call to a different life than that of my childhood home, out of my physical house, and its meaning and lessons into my spiritual house. When the cartage company arrived to take it away on Thursday, just one day before what would have been Aunt Rene’s 110th birthday, I experienced simultaneously the saddest of endings, the deep longing of unfulfilled dreams, and the most exhilarating moment of possibility, of new beginnings.
Is Cleaning Out Really About the Stuff?
Okay, this is a lot of words about a dresser (hence the reason we writing teachers use this kind of prompt over and over again). And it is a lot of meaning to infuse into a pile of wood and metal. But if we are honest with ourselves, even the least material among us have those objects that we cling to, that represent more than the object itself ever can. Cleaning out, organizing, these activities are never just about making space. I have other possessions like this, for example, a red coat that I no longer wear but cannot part with, a black evening gown from my operatic performance days, hanging hopefully in the back of the closet. These items remain as representations and reminders of times past, of love lost, and of my journey towards the moment in which I now stand and breath life.
And so, an ending, a departure, becomes a beginning in a most meaningful way. As a dresser departs, memories come into focus, the road already lived becomes understandable and the road ahead beckons as some old fears fall away. I may finally be ready to embrace that spirit of adventure that Aunt Rene offered so many, many years ago.
Looking Ahead in 2023
To start my work in a new year, I often begin by forming a question or two that drives my days, or at least my reading and writing. Over the next months, I’ll be digging into the relationship between our physical senses, our spiritual senses, and our seeking lives. You, dear reader, can expect to see some essays on these topics over the next months, in a kind of a series that as yet has no name.
Thank you for joining during 2022 and I hope that you continue to read in 2023. Through the Cracks remains free and will remain free for the foreseeable future, so, if something inspires you, please feel free to share the newsletter and invite your friends.
May whatever calls you these early days of 2023 uplift and transform you as you walk the road ahead. Have you been doing some “cleaning out” this January? I would love to here about it, if you are willing to share. The invitation to leave a comment and tell me about it is always here!