Sylvia's Journal

We have a new roof. Roofers bring large dumpsters. After all the roofing detritus was dumped there was plenty of room for more. Our roof expert told us that we had too much stuff in the attic of what is now our combined office. The structure was not built to hold boxes and boxes of school materials and childhood treasures and CDs of our daughters, plus boxes and boxes of old administrative papers, letters and postcards from Axel, his parents and his former loves, clothes for dolls, for babies, for grownups, countless yards of African fabrics, dishes, moth eaten camel and cow hair rugs, saddle bags, mementos, and boxes and boxes of books: French books, African books, Lebanon books, yearbooks, Dutch books, and magazines that we once thought worth keeping.

And so we embarked on an exhausting trip down memory lane, which included countless steps up and down from the attic to the basement and back, aggravating our muscle and tendon problems from which we are now recovering. 

Peter Walsh, whose book, Let It Go, we first borrowed from the library, then bought as we figured it was an important reference manual, guided us on our journey. What is a treasure, what is a toxic memory?  Much as we did some months ago when we threw out all the papers and cuttings and letters related to our plane crash, now we threw out, without second thoughts, dismal papers and photos and magazines about the years we lived in Lebanese which was at war.

I threw out my entire collection of Dutch literature, closing a door on that part of my life. I had put adds on the website for Dutch people in the Boston area but got no response. I knew I was not going to re-red them and knew no one who would want them.

We made piles for the thrift stores in our area, for the Waring School (all the French books), and the higher end (and pickier) resale boutique in our town, the Stock Exchange. The rest piled up in our office to take to our daughters, including my grandfather’s desk on which I prepared for my final school exams in the spring of 1970. Tessa and I had a facetime session going through all her artwork portfolios, a tedious exercise but it thinned things out considerably.

We found a carefully wrapped up and preserved lot of baby clothes, they were Axel’s. I recognized some from pictures preserved in small photo albums, also in those boxes. They are vintage 1940s. There was a story there, a sad story of the siblings that never came, yellow clothes in case the baby was a girl. I carefully washed and ironed them and then hung them in the grandkids room closet. Not that I would want any kid to wear these clothes today but I simply couldn’t throw them out. I did check the vintage baby clothes offerings on Etsy and eBay but noticed there was a glut (though very little from the 40s). I think these clothes are most interesting for textile artists who can turn them into something beautiful. I will ask around to find people who may want to do that.

I offered up to the dumpster a collection of conference briefcases that I had once hoped to attach to a wall in my office as they were all locally handcrafted and some quite beautiful. But the idea was rejected and I had packed them up, for what? So much of what was up in the attic was there because we thought they were treasures but we learned from Peter Walsh that very few items are truly treasures, the others simply labeled as such because we didn’t know what to do with them. Out they went.

When the dumpster retrieval man showed up I asked what happens to all the detritus and discards as I was feeling badly about what we were adding to a landfill. He told me it gets sorted and only stuff that cannot be recycled (sadly: plastics) goes to the landfill. Metal, paper and wood is separated and recycled or burned (hmmm). And there we stood on the now liberated driveaway, looking up at our new roof that we will never have to replace again (our kids will) and then taking in the opened up space in the attic. 

When I was 10 or 12 I used to borrow books from the library about the lives of accomplished women like Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale. I think I inherited a gene from my maternal line that assumed men and women were equal and deserved to be treated equally and could do anything that the other sex could do (men could knit sox and sew clothes and women could be captains, and train conductors). This wasn’t the prevailing opinion in the 1950s in Holland. Only boys played soccer or cricket. Women doctors were rare except in well baby clinics and as teachers of hygiene (which is what my mom did). Most of the mothers of my schoolmates stayed at home, and those who had started university studies stopped them when they got married.  

Mari Popova, in her book ‘Figuring’ tells the stories of several accmplished women who lived in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and whom I had never heard about. All these women, astronomers, artists, mathematicians, inventors also bucked the trend: they were told to get married and focus on children and home.

I am curious about these women who have veered from the path that convention prescribed.  My mom did that, both my grandmothers did that.

To this day I am fascinated by women who dare to run for president of the United States, who take on powerful industry lobbies because of the damage they do, who call out abuses that have gone unchallenged. During my early morning exercise bike rides, I have been listening to Michelle Obama, Melinda Gates, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren telling their stories and making history (her-story) in the process. 

Two things have struck me in all their stories:  they all got to the place where they made history (her-story) because they found (recovered) their authentic voice, never silenced by convention and/or powerful men. They also are (and may be this is a typical feminine trait) driven to understand other people’s lives – empathy is the word they all use. 

In my various neuroscience classes I am learning that empathy isn’t actually as great as people claim. If I empathize with someone who is not in a good place, my brain chemistry micks the other’s and I risk getting into that not so good place myself. Better is compassion, which is a combination of empathy (understanding the other, standing under the other’s reality) and action (“how can I help you?”).

With the democratic primary campaigning in full flight I am looking for candidates who show compassion with proposals for action, anchored in understanding (empathy if you will) that are actually realistic and realizable.