Pack-Rat

I'm a pack-rat. From earliest childhood, I've hoarded junk. I suspect it's in my genes: in my family there are many stories of relatives who have amassed great collections of books, seashells, stamps, and buttons. One of my uncles spent his lifetime collecting books about Robin Hood. By the time of his death, he had the largest collection in the world outside of Nottingham. His library included hundreds of volumes, old and new: first editions, books in Swahili, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew, Turkish, Chinese. All about Robin Hood. The older he got, the more anxious he became. After he died, who would keep them all? Who would oil their bindings, make sure they were kept at the right humidity and temperature? And who would make sure that no one with grimy fingers got their cotton-picking fingers on his treasures?

Although I can smile at my uncle and his fastidious ways, deep down inside, I have his acquisitive ways. I am convinced that only my peripatetic lifestyle -- ten years here, five years there -- has kept my collections at bay. But I've struggled with this condition all my life.

When I was seventeen, I spent a year in Florida, living with a cousin and working. I can still remember packing to go back to California. My cousin, from the non-pack-rat side of my family, tried to help me. "You're not taking that?" she gasped as I filled my boxes with all sorts of junk. But I was. Dresses I could no longer wear, shoes with broken straps, brochures from places we'd visited, books I'd already read two or three times.

When I opened the boxes back in California, it all looked different. Did I really need brochures for Parrot Jungle and Flamingo Park? What could I do with them? Hadn't I read Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters enough? Would I ever manage to get the straps of my black high heels fixed? I thought about the money I'd spent mailing my boxes. That would come in a lot handier than clothes that no longer fit, books I'd already read, and broken shoes. And nobody ever bought lunch with a collection of used brochures.

That was my first wake-up call. During my next major move, I was a lot more careful about what I took with me. Still, after a year in Japan, I came back to the States with eight boxes of things I couldn't bear to part with. I stashed them in my long-suffering sister's garage, where they stayed for years. On trips back to Southern California, I would agonize over precious items. Old clothes I was emotionally attached to. Books I'd traveled all over Mexico and Guatemala with. Miscellaneous nonsense I would never use, but could hardly bear to throw away.

And I still collected things. Stealthily -- a bit here, a little there. Things built up, but not everything was in one place so I couldn't really grasp the full horror of what I had done.

My husband tried in vain to make me throw things away, but it was finally this last move that shook me enough to do a serious cull. On one of our last days in Scotland, my friend Dina showed up at our flat and took one open-mouthed look around. She didn't even say anything, she just opened a roll of black garbage bags and started heaving things in. My dried flower arrangements, old Easter baskets, stacks of faded dishtowels depicting English castles, used packs of cards, puzzles, cracked pottery -- all the things that had already survived dozens of ruthless trips to Oxfam. We had one spat (over a torn Japanese fan; I know I can fix it), and I cried a little, but suddenly I saw the gift she was offering me -- liberation from possesions -- and I started discarding junk with reckless abandon. I was grateful that Dina hadn't seen the place before I'd started culling. And that she hadn't been with me when those first boxes came back from Miami.

And once I got started culling, I found I could not stop. So what if I'd had those dried flowers since our first year in Scotland? Who really needed a whole stack of torn, faded dishtowels? And the relief this gave me was nothing short of cathartic.

Here, in our new flat, I have managed to accumulate almost nothing. This is a huge breakthrough. I can go to potteries and look around, but buy nothing; I can visit bookstores and browse, but leave empty-handed (it does help that 99.9% of the books are in Turkish); I can go clothes shopping with my daughters and end up with zip-all for myself. Somehow, I have managed to cure (almost) a lifetime affliction, and that is wonderful.

This breakthrough may have something to do with getting older: at some point, you realize you can't take it with you. In the end, everything goes: possessions, wealth, beauty, friendship, memory -- even dignity. All you can do is hope to leave behind the best possible record of your achievements, whatever they happen to be.

I'm thrilled with my new-found ability, but the best thing of all is that what I've managed to do with things, I have also learned to do with words.

For years now, I've struggled with a certain overwritten manuscript. The premise of my novel is good, but it has been weighed down by a meandering plot, extraneous characters, and far too many words. And yet every time I went back to my manuscript with the intention to edit, I found myself bogged down. How could I possibly get rid of the passage where Beatrice confers with her tortoise over the two bullies? Or the one where Herleva manages to cure one of her classmates? Rereading my novel, my heart would almost break as I imagined pressing that 'delete' button and getting rid of my precious words.

But a few months back, after we'd gotten settled, I opened up the manuscript and started reading. And I saw it all: the places where I'd gone overboard and put in too many details; the characters I didn't really need; the meanderings that did nothing to advance the narrative. It helped that I won a free critique of a different manuscript and was given this advice, and it helped that my writing group gave me a kick in the butt. But the thing that really pushed me was the desire to get the thing finished at all costs -- to leave it as good as it could be, whether it is ever published or not.

Besides, I've got all my deleted passages saved in a special file. Like that torn fan, you never know: someday I might be able to fix them.