A STORY

It's been a week since I wrote.  So I'll tell you a story.   It's called


THE AFGHAN: or Learning to change your mind


Once upon a time there was a 62-year-old woman.   Let's just call her Ruth.   She decided that she didn't need all her stuff anymore.  After all, it just got in the way.   And it was messy.   And some of it stayed in a box in a closet permanently and wasn't doing anybody any good.   Ruth had struggled managing her stuff her whole life.   Heck, she lost multiple roommates over this issue.  First there was her sister Bonnie, who had had it sharing rooms with this messy, stuff-non-manager sister by the time she was 8 years old.  And she still had 10 more years of room sharing to go!


Then there were the college room mates.   And then there were the two husbands.  Like the one who said to Ruth one day,  "Don't you see the 8 pairs of shoes on this floor?"   And Ruth replied, in complete honesty and innocence,  "Well, I do now!  But I didn't before you pointed it out!"  Ruth had to face it, some of the roommates were better off lost.  But that did not solve the stuff issue.   After all, she had to share a room with herself and sometimes that was just hard.


Flash forward to her retirement years.  Ruth sat herself down one day (after cleaning a space to do so) and decided that she was through spending one more second of her life worrying about all this stuff.  And she decided to purge. . . . .big time.   Nothing was safe from her scrutiny.   She decided to spend all her energy figuring out the few things to keep, and then let everything else go!   Wow. . . it felt great!


Many things went that Ruth loved.  But she decided that just because she loved something was no reason to keep it.  She was looking forward to this new life without organizing issues.  So out went the gifts from family and friends.  Out went the antiques and memorabilia that she bought at shops over the years.  She gave many things to friends so that she knew her stuff had a good home.  She donated many things to the thrift shop so that she knew that the money would support a worthy cause.  She was sure that her mother. . . .the one that had so clearly made her aware of her organizational issues in the first place. . . . would be so proud of her.  As a matter of fact, getting rid of things that had been owned by each of her parents was very difficult.  But she realized that their stuff was not them anyway.  And wouldn't her mom in particular be much happier if she knew her stuff was serving a need for someone?


I don't need to tell you that the thrift shop in question LOVED Ruth and all her stuff.  Every day she took more and more car loads.   Every day she was asked the same question,  "Are you SURE you want to get rid of these things?"  Every day she was treated like some sort of celebrity by the thrift store people.  Once they were convinced that she was serious, they gratefully helped her unload her car.    This was great!


And the stuff was selling.  Because when Ruth went into the thrift shop she rarely saw any of the items she had donated.  The lady behind the counter assured her that the stuff was flying off the shelves.   Ruth even walked in one day to find one of her acquaintances buying something that she had donated.


Ruth went away for the summer and forgot about all the stuff that was gone.  She came back to her house not remembering anything that had been given away, but feeling the freedom of having a relatively small storage area that housed all the stuff that had made the cut.


Then one day in October Ruth decided to stop by the thrift shop to look for winter shirts.  She wandered all around the thrift shop, even in the room that housed mostly men's clothes.   There was a rack with several hand made blankets, mostly crocheted.  And then she saw it.  The two-toned green afghan that she and her mother had knit.  Ruth had bought the yarn to make the afghan way back when she was adding a porch to her townhouse.   She thought it would look nice on the futon out there.  But true to form, the yarn was bought, but the afghan never finished. . . or even begun for that matter.


One week Ruth's parents were visiting her at her townhouse.  Her mom saw all the yarn and offered to take it home and make up all the squares (63 in all. . . each knitted with a different pattern).  She said that she would make the squares if Ruth would crochet around them and sew them together.  This seemed like a great idea.  So Ruth agreed.


Eventually her mom brought all the squares back. . . all finished.  And Ruth put them in her closet because she was SURE she would get around to sewing them together.   And there they sat.   And there they were when Ruth moved to Alexandria.  And they were transferred in the box to a new closet on a new street.


And then Ruth's mom died.  


And one day several weeks later, Ruth found that box of squares and decided that now she would take the time to sew them together.  And she did. Night after night she crocheted around each square.  And when she had two done she would sew them together.   And then two more.  And two more.  Because her mom always said,  "Inch by inch, everything's a cinch."   And damned if that wasn't true.


But by this time, the colors Ruth had chosen for the afghan did not go with any of the colors of her house.  And she was in a matchy-matchy phase, having watched many many hours of HGTV.   So the afghan, now finished, languished.


When it was time to part with her stuff, she decided that the afghan would go.  Someone would buy it and it would be wonderful and warm and cozy for them.    And her mom would like that.  


Well all of that was fine and good.  Except that here she was, in October, 4 months after donating it to the thrift shop.  And there it was.  Still sitting with its $15 price tag.  Which Ruth thought was a good price.  That way no one would buy it for a dog blanket!   But there it was.   And it made her sad.   It wasn't making anyone happy.  It was just hanging there not being bought.


Ruth left but she couldn't help thinking about the blanket.  And the more she thought the more she decided that she had to go back and get it.  After all, now she had a summer condo in New York where the afghan would fit in quite nicely with the decor, and would keep her warm on those nights when the upstate temperatures dipped sometimes.  The more she thought about getting the afghan back the happier she became.  She planned it perfectly.  She could not go back and get it the next day because it was Sunday and the shop was closed.  And she could not go back the next day because it was Monday and the shop was closed again.


So she had three days to get excited about getting the afghan back.  She had to rethink this whole getting rid of things agenda.  Parting with the afghan had clearly been a mistake.  She would have to undo it.  


On Tuesday morning early she went to her workout class at 7:30.  She had the whole thing planned.  She would go home after the workout, clean up, get her money, and be back at the shop by the time it opened.  She would not ask the woman to give the afghan back. . . .she would pay the $15.  And if the woman insisted on giving it back, due to the enormity of her other donations, she would accept it, and then give the woman a $20 donation to the shop.  She was so excited about reclaiming the afghan that she even told the woman she was staying with all about this wonderful morning she was going to have.


After the workout, Ruth had a couple of stops to make.  But as soon as she could she got her purse, climbed into the car and headed for the thrift shop.  Her heart was actually beating a little faster as she anticipated the conversation with the lady at the shop.   It was okay to change her mind.  It was okay to go back on part of what she had been determined to do.  She parked the car and flew into the shop and headed to the rack with the blankets.


The afghan was no longer there.   It was apparently in the home of some other person who had liked it.  Which was the idea in the first place.  And Ruth will eventually feel really okay about that.  But not quite yet.