Day 28: Picture Frame

From an early age I learned to hold onto clothes, toys, and books that I had outgrown. Yearly, my mother would tell my brother and I that we had to clean out the toy room-- our enclosed upstairs porch. I'd unearth toys that I hadn't played with all year and suddenly want to use them. Still, she'd pile them into black trash bags and I'd cry as we dragged them down the brown carpeted stairs to the front porch. To this day, every time I go to clean out my room and remove things from my parents house, my father warns, "Make sure you aren't throwing away anything you might want someday," and he tells the story of how years ago my mother asked him to clean out the attic and he threw away his uncle's letters home from World War II. He blames my mother and says he always regrets getting rid of them. It's no wonder I had trouble letting go-- who knows when I might need something in the future.

During one of our yearly cleanses, my mother was in a particularly defeated mood and kept complaining about all the "shit" my brother and I had. I was about six at the time and decided I would show my mother that I could clean up. I threw just about everything I owned in the giant black bag. Later that day my mother asked about the miniature plastic figures that I had and when I told her I'd put them in the trash she dragged my brother downstairs with her to frantically dig through the bag on the front lawn. I was told that I should hold on to them because "someday they'll be worth money." I thought that if these little one inch pieces of plastic with the chipped and faded paint could be worth money someday than anything could. Not only might I miss the items I was getting rid of, but they might be worth money someday. So began years of hording. My parents' attic is still filled with old stuffed animals and barbie dolls that I couldn't part with. I'm sure the plastic figures I tried to get rid of more than twenty years ago are still laying around somewhere also.

Sometimes my mother would find things in the attic and bring them down to my bedroom. Once, as a teenager, I said something about how the plastic painted eggs she'd left on my bureau had disrupted my obsessive compulsive order and she snapped, "Fine, I won't ever give you nice things any more." From then on I learned to accept her ancient offerings.

When I moved into my apartment in Massachusetts she came by with the frame pictured above. Oval shaped, dust covered, the pins that hold the back in place went missing years ago. Despite how I've tried to clean it, it still has a layer of grime and dust caked to it. "I thought you might like this," she said when she brought it to me.  "I don't think I'll be able to use it," I said. She suggested I use it for my wedding picture and made it clear she wouldn't be taking the frame back home with her. I kept it out of guilt. It's been collecting dust beneath a pile of boxes in my front entryway since she first brought it to me. I tried unsuccessfully to sell it at a yard sale and packed it with the other items that did not sell that I will be donating. Maybe it will end up in an antique shop somewhere, worth 25 cents someday.