1. I spent the morning clearing out more space in Mom's basement. Many years ago, Mom and Dad had a large cupboard built in the basement and, over the years, it became a place where Mom stored a wide variety of things: glass vases, a coffee bean grinder, canning equipment, huge plastic bins of flour and sugar, light bulbs, mixing bowls she had replaced in the kitchen, crock pots, a meat grinder, a meat slicer, and much more. Mom loved giving kitchen gadgets a try and when she ran out of room in the kitchen to store them, she put them in the big basement cupboard and sometimes she packed one of them back upstairs for a cooking project, but mostly they have sat in this cupboard. Mom always knew where each item was located in this cupboard. Her memory for such detail astonished me.
This morning, after I lugged up Mom's artificial Christmas tree, disassembled a bricks and boards shelf, brought a now flimsy set of drawers to the garage, filled several garbage bags with everything from old tupperware containers to mildewed Boy Scout memorabilia I decided to let go of, I tackled the big cupboard. I'm not quite halfway done emptying it.
The garage is slowly filling up.
Soon it will be time to make a run to the dump and to figure out where we might donate other of Mom's things.
For years, I wanted to get started on this project while Mom was alive. Mom could never bring herself to let me (or anyone else) move all these things along. These belongings were more than just things for Mom. They held memories of fixing Nuts n Bolts, baking cookies, and making popcorn balls at Christmas, Thanksgiving dinners, weddings and receptions, people who had given her some of these things as gifts, trips to the Oregon coast, slow cooking soups, and many other experiences she cherished over the years.
These things also gave Mom a sense of accomplishment, security, and comfort.
It's no wonder she couldn't let them go.
2. I buzzed up to the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes trailhead across Forest Service Road #9 from the Snake Pit, parked the Malibu, and met Byrdman in the Snake Pit parking lot. He drove me up to where she shares a river property with Dan Carrico's family up the North Fork. We got some Prichard Mai Tais out of the freezer, each filled ourselves a glass of the boozy slush, and sat down by the river for a while and reminisced about the Kellogg High School All Class Reunion from a week ago and other stuff.
3. After a while, we moved our two man party to another part of the property where we could listen to "Classic Vinyl" on Sirius-XM radio. I drank a few short pours of Glenlivet 12 Single Malt Scotch over a cube of ice and we listened to great hits by Led Zeppelin, Santana, Little Feat, CCR, The Rolling Stones, and many others while we remembered the teams from the NBA and Major League Baseball we enjoyed when we were kids.
At one point, Byrdman remarked that the Dodgers during the 1960s had the first infield ever made up of all switch-hitters. (It turns out the year was 1965.) We worked together and pieced together that the players were first sacker Wes Parker, the double play combo of Jim Lefebvre (2B) and Maury Wills (SS), and Jim "Junior" Gilliam at the hot corner.
It was a perfect afternoon up the river. The temperature was in the 70s. It was quiet. The river ran clean and peacefully. The music was awesome. I was totally relaxed.
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