Elegy for Some Old Stuff
by Susan Wolfson

Today I threw out some old stuff. For me this represents more than just a little routine housecleaning. For me, there is a wrench associated with such activity. They're not just old credit cards from now-defunct retail establishments. They're old friends, touching reminders of days gone by never to be relived. They're precious keepsakes, illustrating the simpler ways of an earlier world, infused with an innocence that seems impossible now. But however painful discarding may be, it is really the only way to make room for new growth.

So which items was I able to part with? Well, gone are the identification cards from certain bank accounts I had during my residence in Texas. They were made of cardboard, the bank account number and my name written on lines in ball point pen by the new accounts representative. I remember why I was hanging on to them - they embodied the hope I felt on opening a little savings account somewhere. That little savings account was a prelude to the good fortune I imagined was just around the corner. This account wouldn't get nibbled at, I vowed. Or maybe this was the account I opened to get my first safe deposit box in my own name. Previously, I'd used my parents' boxes to store valuables. Finally, I'd arrived at adulthood.

Ah well. Since the accounts are long closed, the box long ago emptied, verily even the financial institution long since merged into some symbolic acronym of bank consolidation, I cut up the cardboard cards, not without regret.

What else? The check guarantee cards from grocery stores in Texas. Those chains still exist, but let's face it - when will I again be shopping for lettuce, peanut butter and mangoes at Randall's grocery in Houston? And even if I did, surely that old card isn't good there anymore. I haven't lived there in fifteen years. I've long since sold (at a huge loss) the condo that housed tenants for nine years, and my bank accounts there - well we already know about those. Just sentiment has kept me hanging on to those little icons of my routine there.

I also cut up most of my credit cards with companies that no longer exist, and I cut up the duplicate cards sent to me by stores I never went to anyway. I did keep some old credit cards. My first retail store credit card was Bullock's. They have since merged with Macy's and issued new cards with new numbers on them. But how could I part with that narrow brown bit of plastic which commenced my role as community pillar? Never mind that this journey has also led me to the tormenting fires of that special hell reserved for credit card junkies - it's still a milestone to remember. I also kept my Gulf card. Remember them? That was actually my very first credit card. I got it by persisting. They turned me down - I was eighteen and working my way through college. But I wrote back, explaining why I only made a couple thousand dollars a year. My letter smacked of Horatio Alger. They sent me the card.

I cut up my old patient card from the Houston medical center, but I kept my old library card from the Houston library. Some things are just sacred to a writer, even if she is blocked most of the time. I cut up the old telephone credit cards, even though they had the old phone numbers engraved on them. The numbers were all reassigned years ago, and yet it sometimes seems that I could dial my old number in Houston and find myself answering the phone.

Cutting and more cutting. After a few plastic cards, the scissors were sharpened and fairly flew through the paper and cardboard items. When I got to the phone credit cards my father had given me, I began to cry a little. That little symbol of his concern that I should never be stranded somewhere. Until fairly recently, no one else had ever done that for me. What an eloquent yet wordless way to say you care - just handing someone a phone card in passing. "Here, I have an extra one."

And my tears became a torrent as I cut through the old Neiman Marcus Inner Circle cards he gave me to use. These cards earned my parents points on their account if used, but the bills would go to them for payment. I was always too proud and independent to use them. "Please go shopping," Mom would say. "You can use those cards we gave you." But I preferred to increase my own mountain of debt rather than backslide the least bit into what I perceived as weakness. It was easier to hold onto the resentments than to even up the score at their invitation. Now I truly regret not giving my mother that little satisfaction. This kind of gratuity, however distant, was the best way she knew to offer me her love. And since she has passed away, I have come to understand more fully how she did the best she could.

And it occurred to me as I pulled together the fragments of plastic and paper, my vision blurred by my tears, my nose running, that I needn't hold onto these things any more. I realized that I perpetuated my grief for these defunct places and times by keeping talismans around. I realized that it kept the wounds open and picked at them. Suddenly I didn't want to hang on so tightly to physical things that only led me to relive the pain over and over in the same way. It would be best to feel the pure pain for what it really was, rather than displacing it into nostalgia for bygones.

Wiping my eyes, I swept the fragments into the trash. Everything feels a little lighter now. There seems to be a little more light in the corners of my home. It's my fanciful mind at work again, a Rube Goldberg device that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. But for a little while at least, there is room in the cupboard for new dishes and in the closet for new clothes. And there is space in my heart for the feelings that matter today.


copyright 2001. All rights reserved by author. Granted permission to CirclePoint/InnerMidst Magazine.

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