Threads of My LIfe

The threads of my Life As a Realtor, I often have to counsel people who are downsizing about getting rid of their “stuff”. Unfortunately, our children and their children, no longer want the things we have accumulated over our lifetime. Telling their elders that they “don’t want to be owned by their possessions”, and they want to lead a minimalist lifestyle, they encourage their elders (myself included), to go on and get rid of the “stuff”. Don’t leave it for them to dispose of after we are dead. They want “experiences” not “stuff”. I understand their logic, but as I walk through my home, I don’t see my “stuff” as excess baggage, I see it as part of the tapestry of my life, woven with threads made from the “stuff” they eschew. I don’t see it as my choosing “stuff” over “experiences”, I see them as the embodiment of my experiences. The exquisitely hand embroidered folding screen in the living room where the roses seem to be lifelike, with bug holes embroidered on the leaves, we bought in Pusan, Korea, from an orphanage that taught the little girls to embroider – selling their wares not only to keep the orphanage running, but teaching the girls a skill for their future security. The hand woven shawls and hand carved nativity set from the Philippines, another school where nuns taught skills to help the indigent peoples support themselves remind me of the 30 days we spent traveling the orient on our mid-tour leave when we were stationed at Osan. In the curio cabinet, I bought in Taiwan, right before the US broke relations with Taiwan and I wondered if they would ever be able to be shipped to me, are more brightly colored threads - plaster handprints from my children; tiny miniatures of their faces; Russian stacking dolls – the first from the Canadian World’s Fair I attended as a child, others from a more recent visit to Russia; German smokers and Christmas bells; the Pennsylvania Dutch little boy and girl on their bench I was given as a child; finger castanets, from a trip to Spain as a small child; a bracelet my mother bought in Morocco when we lived there. The Windsor Rocking Chair in the family room that I saved my babysitting money to buy as a teenager. The Christmas rug that my sister commissioned, then sent me when she lived in Turkey. The bakers dozen Rodney and Rhonda Reindeer that Burger King gave away in Children’s Meals in the 80’s that now cost a fortune at Hallmark piled high on the Taiwanese grandmother clock’s turrets. Then there’s the French buffet that stopped me in my tracks in a hanger at the annual Ramstein Officer’s Wives Bazaar but I have never had a ceiling high enough to put all the topknots on. Each piece has a story to tell. Each piece is a thread in my life’s story. Apart, they are just “stuff”, but combined, they are the threads that are woven together to tell the story of my life – places I’ve been to, things I have seen and done. People and places I’ve known and loved. They aren’t just “stuff”, they are the threads of my life. Woven to create who I am.