We’ll Deal with the Hat and the Meat Grinder Tomorrow

I threw out a study of the county jail’s handling of people with mental illness, a plan to redevelop a neighborhood park, and extra copies of survey reports on homeless people in our town. I also threw out a massive, multi-site study of delinquency prevention programs in Wisconsin that was cursed from the outset because I forgot to invite a key guy to a planning meeting. I got paid but I was treated like dirt. Less than dirt. Gum on the bottom of his shoe. It was a great looking report though.

I also threw out medical records I’d requested decades ago that described surgery for an ectopic pregnancy and then the labor and delivery of my baby girl. Why I needed those medical records I couldn’t tell you. There are thick manila envelopes full of handwritten notes when we were going back and forth with Nicaraguan orphanage officials about adopting three of our kids. They have phrases like, “he doesn’t sit up or stand but there’s no reason he can’t.” This was in regard to a seventeen-month boy we were asked to adopt. I kept all those papers along with newspaper clippings, so many of them about the Sandinistas, the war, the kids who had been adopted by Milwaukee families. I threw none of that out.

I kept all four high school yearbooks.

I haven’t tackled the stuffed animals. For an older woman, I probably have an unusual number of stuffed animals. And let me be clear. I did not buy them. They were gifts. Don’t ask me why family members look at me and think Stuffed Animal! Anyway, since I have a cat and a husband to sleep with, I’ve not taken any of the stuffed animals to bed with me. But, oddly and don’t make me explain, I could see myself doing that, you know, if worse came to worst.

On one deep bookshelf, way in the back, is the red hat I borrowed from a friend ten years ago when I was invited to a Kentucky Derby party. I am loathe to ask her if she still wants her hat back because, really, why haven’t I asked her already? I ended up not wearing the hat to the party making it all the worse. I will address this problem tomorrow.

I am not Swedish Death Cleaning. I don’t think. I haven’t read the book. But it occurs to me that somebody who has stuffed animals, old reports, and a meat grinder – an actual meat grinder – gathered like a still life on the bottom shelf in her office needs some psychological rearrangement. I am much attached to the meat grinder.

The bag that I took out to the trash was very heavy. I forget exactly what was in it. Which is the whole point, I guess.