"Moving, and 'Stuff'"

Sydney M. Williams
February 23, 2012

Note from Old Lyme

“Moving, and ‘Stuff’”

“What we call the beginning is often an end. And to make an end

is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

                                                                                      “Little Gidding”, 1942
                                                                                        Four Quartets
                                                                                        T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

“Where does stuff go when it dies?

Does it go to stuff heaven?”

                                                                                         George Carlin (1937-2008)
                                                                                         Comedian and Social Critic

Buried beneath the miscellanea that are the contents of my bedside table were eight fingernail clippers. They symbolize my squirrel-like nature, upsetting to those who lead more orderly lives, like my daughter Linie whose house in Rye is a temple to beauty and organization. It is a trait that I unfortunately inherited from some loony ancestor who never threw a bone away when it could be used to make soup, or a stirrup if it could be turned into a cup. Of course, amidst all the rubbish there were some interesting finds, like the sales slip for a pair of end tables bought on December 5, 1965 from Nathan Liverant of Colchester, Connecticut for $300.00. My son Sydney has become their guardian. And then there was the un-cashed check for $100.00 from my son Edward dated 1987 found in the back of the drawer of an antique shaving mirror. I suggested to Edward that he place the check in the back of his daughter’s dresser, so that she might find it years from now.

Last Thursday, we moved out of our 900 square foot, one bed room apartment on 64th Street in New York, after seventeen years. Even if we had not moved, we should have pretended to have done so. The amount of stuff one accumulates over a few years is amazing. A thorough house cleaning is cathartic. Dust balls the size of small mice behind two bookcases and my grandfather’s desk; debris an inch thick beneath radiators that I am sure predated our time in the apartment. But most of the accumulation was my own. Rain would bring another umbrella, to be dumped in the closet alongside its predecessors, until there were a dozen or more. Gloves seemed to appear on their own, as though immaculately conceived. Each coat (and there was an abundance of those) housed its own pair.

Besides the gloves and umbrellas, there were eighty-two ties, thirty-three belts, seven surge protectors, fifteen pairs of shoes – I become exhausted just thinking of all that stuff. Even my seven-year old grandson, George, when he saw innumerable boxes in the library in Old Lyme, asked, “How much ‘stuff’ do you have, Pop Pop?”

Packing up books (700), paintings (40 hung on the walls), photos (innumerable) and papers (countless) is endlessly fascinating, as I kept coming across something I had forgotten. A project that should have taken a few hours, consumed days. Instead of packing boxes, I found myself looking closely at pictures, leafing through albums and papers, and skimming through forgotten novels. But, as George intimated with his question, I have too much stuff. There are those who suggest that apartments and houses should periodically be emptied. But Caroline and I are both collectors; so I doubt that is a route we are likely to take, at least willingly. Nevertheless, I did feel good putting old or unused items outside for the janitor to remove, but wondering, as did George Carlin: where would it go. My stuff, I am sure, has little chance of going to Heaven.

When the last box had been removed and the van finally loaded, Caroline and I walked through the two rooms, our footsteps echoing off the empty walls; we were reminded of the first time we saw the place in January 1995, and the excitement we felt of getting an apartment in New York (to go with our house in Old Lyme) after twenty-five years of living in Greenwich. Part of me was sad, as our departure marked the end of one era, but another part was pleased and I looked toward the future. As T.S. Eliot wrote, “And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

While most of the “stuff” ended up in Old Lyme, the furniture is now in the homes of our children where we can see it, as often as we (and they) choose. So the end is not really even an end. I will continue to write Thoughts of the Day and the more sporadic Notes from Old Lyme, and I will be in New York, at least a few days every week, though now residing at the University Club where I don’t have to worry about my supper or making my bed. Their library exceeds anything I could imagine, and when I walk out of my room I simply shut the door.

But my home will be Old Lyme, a beautiful New England village where our house overlooks the marsh and the tidal flats of the Connecticut River, as it empties into Long Island Sound. This is where Caroline has spent most of the last seventeen years. There is an old saying that says, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but when one reaches a certain age, flickers of mortality pass before half-dimmed eyes, and there appears less wisdom in that adage. I would rather think of Mr. Eliot’s concluding lines: “The end is where we start from.”