A Lemon Zester Life

Linda Robinson

For three years, I’ve stored the remains of my precious stuff in a climate-controlled storage area.  Yesterday I couldn’t have named all the items that were housed in the dark, waiting to be used and admired again.  No room in my new life yet.

Today most of the stuff has gone.

When my mother died, it took my sisters and me a pitifully small time to disburse her precious stuff.  Some of her things I recognized and knew the value of to her, but many seemed insignificant without the story belonging.  Only a few pieces of jewelry had notes for delivery attached to them:  she died fast and hadn’t much time to organize her wishes.

My mother’s precious stuff included fur coats and jewelry she had little opportunity to wear.  I think now that she, like me, harbored in her heart a secret life where she needed a fur coat, in the same way I needed china and shoes.  We elevated ourselves above the plane of everyday living to a life where we shone and smiled in our secret.  Maybe in our pasts, she wore the fur and the jewelry, but that life was gone as my life of good china and expensive shoes is gone as well.

Maybe we hold on to precious stuff to signify and hold our lives, even as our existence changes and grows.  Perhaps we save those gowns that we’ll never wear again with the dream that our granddaughters will wear them to the ball in a misty future and we will be able to live their excitement secondhand.

We save the books because one day we’ll want to revisit the places they took us to and remember how it felt to have adventures without fear or reluctance to try something new.

My precious stuff has idled, serving no one, locked up.  Today I’m learning that stuff has no value unless it has purpose.

One day soon, a family starting over will serve the first meal of their new life on Noritake’s Ebony and Ivory china, with matching linen and silverware.  Another family will relive the Jazz Age at their dinner table; and I will stop thinking about how they might not know what years the jazz age included or what shoes flappers wore.

The boxes of books that survived the moving purge are on the shelves at the nursing home, ready to deliver history, adventure, humor and mystery to other folks.

A hundred movies will be returned to a screen in another nursing home.  New old eyes will be thrilled, saddened, involved as the stories unwind.  This is the purpose movies have.

When I climb back in the storage area to the dolls and bears and the wooden high chair that all of us chewed on when we were teething, little ones unknown will soon sit in the chair and care for, hug and make up stories about the toys and cut their teeth on a new world.

Now my mother and I have our precious things where they belong, being useful in the world:  free and finding their true value in the genuine realm of satisfying a need.

Today I’m melancholy about the brief hours it took to drive my long years of remaining precious stuff away.  I am remembering sadly the life that had room for good china, hats, gloves, gorgeous shoes, and indeed, seemed to require that and more, and I’m feeling the loss of that past life.

But I have a tentative thought that none of these were necessary at all, and I take a deep breath at the brewing idea that perhaps I am freer now than I was while the precious stuff lay boxed and bubble-wrapped in the climate-controlled dark.

I confess I did hold onto the lemon zester (which I saved but have never used:  the idea of a lemon zester makes me laugh) and I saved the Valentina Rangoni bronze strappy sandals.  The idea that I ever wore those heels makes me laugh, too.  When I’m completely at ease with myself and my life of freedom, they will be set free as well.

A friend just called about a wilderness adventure.  I’m free and I won’t be taking the lemon zester.

Linda Robinson is an artist who is still growing up in a small town in beautiful Michigan.  Her art can be viewed at Thomas Video in Clawson, Sweetgrass in Adrian and on her website at www.58moon.com