"The Tyranny of Stuff" by Amy Welborn
No, I don’t need more stuff…oh, but what about them? My kids? They’re setting up their homes, I should keep my eye out for cutlery and pots and pans, bookshelves and end tables. So back I go. For their sake, you know.
Until it gets to me again. Not the stuff this time, but the lives spent in these houses, collecting and guarding treasures, even just folding the towels and cleaning the roasting pans that the living now paw through, examine, toss aside or stuff in a bag. So much pleasure and attention poured into those owl collections, those walls of Elvis memorabilia, the shelves of Coke bottles, the dolls, apparently every book ever written about Winston Churchill or, of course, Christmas décor. There’s always a Christmas table and quite often here in the South, an entire Christmas room.
So much energy, so much interest, so much time put into creating the space where we live, and then…we don’t live there. Or anywhere. It’s enough to send me right home gladly empty handed, intent on purging what’s left and determined to reevaluate my priorities.
