Crap at My Parents’ House

Having just spent six weeks at my mom’s, the house where I was born and raised – this blog “Crap At My Parents’ House” really got to me. I haven’t added anything yet, but I think it’s pretty funny. My mom’s house has so much shit in it — seriously. I look around and wonder where the hell she got all this weird furniture. And all of the odd chairs that look like they are from different eras, are indeed hand-me-downs from dead relatives. But my mom’s house is great and it’s a slow work-in-progress. At a turtle’s pace, we have re-done the entire house — and even replaced the 40-year-old carpets! She now has her dream kitchen. But she does seem to collect and keep a lot of stuff. When I was there this summer, I noticed big boxes on the side of the bed in my old bedroom, which is now her’s and the only inhabitable bedroom in the 4-bedroom house — yes, seriously.  So I decided to go through this box myself because I was sure it was going to be full of silly stuff of my mom’s — like old check books from the seventies or something like that. I was all set to call her a hoarder, when suddenly I realized that these two boxes belonged to me. My Everything from high school to my first years working in San Francisco when I had just graduated from college were in these boxes.  I spent two hours going down memory lane — and yes, I saved stupid emails from a co-worker from that first job in San Francisco. I saved passed notes from high school, programs from shows I’d been in, poorly written papers from college….Oy, I’m a loser. And what’s worse. I couldn’t bare to throw any of it away.

In the end, it was my mom who was calling me a hoarder and begging me to get rid of my stuff. I found more me upstairs…..boxes of old “reject” photos, costumes, books — so much, in fact, that I shut the door and turned off the light and wished it to go away. There’s something to be said for moving often.