Contributing writer
My Grandpa Ehrhardt was a good storyteller and he used to tell a tale of a hired hand. This guy just amazed his employer because he was so fast at everything he did.
They sent him out to shuck corn and he was back in no time at all. They sent him to plow the field and he was done in an instant. They gave him the task of chopping wood and before they knew it, the wood was quartered and stacked. They were amazed at his speed. They had hired themselves a wonder-worker.
Then one day they gave him the task of sorting potatoes. Hours went by and there was no word from their hired hand. Finally, the farmer went down in the cellar and found the man sitting there with a small pile of potatoes on either side.
“What’s with you?” the Farmer asked. “You do everything so fast and here you sit with only two small piles of potatoes sorted.”
“It’s the decisions that are killing me,” the man answered.
Well, for the past two weeks my sister and I have been sorting stuff.
“Do we save it?” we asked ourselves.
My sister usually says, “No.”
“Do we sell it?” I ponder.
“Do we need it?” I vacillate.
“Do I want it?”
It’s the decisions that are taking so much time.
We’ve had this storage house that we call Green Acres. We bought it at an auction back in 1995 and we had dreams about cleaning up the house and restoring it; but other dreams and other duties took over the front burners of our lives. The house became the destination of non-decisions.
When we planned a town event (with a theme), the decorations were saved at Green Acres.
When we hosted a tea for the women in the area or got wildly creative with an art show for the elementary kids, it got stored at Green Acres. When I went to an auction and accidentally bought a whole bunch of chairs instead of the one I thought I was bidding on, the extras got stored at Green Acres.
When Aunt Anna asked, “Do you want this?” or Aunt Gertie said, “You girls should take this,” or I said, “I can do something with that.”
It all ended up at Green Acres. You know how it is.
It’s like the attic, the spare room, the junk drawer, or some people’s garages. The years go by and the stuff gets piled high.
Then one day you say, “We’ve got to go through this stuff and make some decisions.”
My sister said, “Get a dumpster.”
An acquaintance said, “I’d light a match.”
Then he didn’t know how many good things were hiding in those boxes.
You know how they say that in a moment of crisis your life passes before you. Well, my life has been passing before me non-stop for three whole weeks. It’s exhausting.
There are family pictures, baby toys, and keepsakes. There’s costumes and costume jewelry — even though I’d given scads of it away.
When my daughter was here visiting, I sat her down with a couple boxes of things that had belonged to her grandmother and said, “What shall we keep?” She reminisced. She read articles and looked at photo albums. She handled my mother’s things and moved them from one pile to another — out of the box, onto the floor. Off the floor to another box, which was too small so another stack grew beside her and then she had something else, she had to do.
Decisions, decisions. Nothing was solved. We now had two boxes and two piles where one had been.
“It’s Grandma’s life we’re sorting,” she said. “If we throw it away it is almost like her life didn’t matter.”
Then later she told my sister, “What if Mom thinks that’s what I’ll do with her stuff some day?”
“Trust me, darlin’, you will. It’s OK,” I said.
But I promised myself I’d do most of the work and start throwing away now.
“Kansans love an auction,” I told her, “Call them in and have a sale when I’m gone and then you go take a trip to Europe.”
Great idea, but I want to go, too. So, three weeks ago I began stacking, sorting, sifting. I’ve been going through their things, my things, our things, (maybe even some of your things that I bought at auctions) and I found myself getting better and better at making those decisions.
It’s another day in the country and we’re down to five boxes to sort-n-sift-n-save-n-sell — then I’ll start on the drawers.