By Laura Spinella
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| The mess that pushed me over the edge |
Is there a rule about using GBC as a confessional? Hmm, perhaps I’ll start a trend. Since the current
theme is transitions, I’ve decided to share the curious personal transition
that occurred last weekend. To begin, I set a kid to the curb. That’s right. I
had my fill of a bedroom floor I couldn’t find, clothes strewn about like the remnants
of a church tag sale, and an array of fuzzy bottomed cups that I may donate to
the local middle school for fall science experiments. I was done with all of it,
so I packed up Jamie and her belongings put them in her car and said, “Laters,
baby!” As her vehicle inched down the
driveway she offered a solitary backward glance. I stood with Jamie’s much neater sister and her
little dog, which we kept, and waved farewell. Almira Gulch never felt such satisfaction. “Maybe you should have let her keep the dog,”
Megan said, a teensy hint of guilt riding her voice. “Tough love, kiddo,” I
replied, heading inside to redecorate.
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| Happy Jamie at School! |
Okay, here’s the confessionJ
My interpretation of Jamie’s departure is somewhat embellished. No worries, I’ve
not set her up for years of therapy.
Well, not with that episode anyway. We packed Jamie up and sent her 1,200
miles south, back to college where a comfy off-campus apartment with her own
bathroom (she shares with three people here) awaited. I would have sent the dog
too but no pets allowed. As a writer, I took a little literary license. As
someone who writes women’s fiction with a heavy thread of romance, I tend to
gravitate toward a touch of drama. In truth, my kids trend more toward a PBS
special than Jersey Shore. So, for the most part, snippets of their
lives must be overstated to achieve good fodder.
The personal transition came with the redecoration—which
was true. I’d methodically plotted this all
summer, and was ready with a paintbrush the moment she vacated the premises. Of
course, before you paint, you have to prep. We set about corralling dust
bunnies and filling a giant trash bag with whatever Jamie deemed unnecessary
baggage. At one point, all but swallowed by a mountain of trash, Megan murmured,
“Geez, if only we’d thought to call Hoarders
first…” In her effort to clean sweep the room, she decided to pare down Jamie’s
books. Jamie is a voracious reader. In part, I think this is because it avoids
cleaning. We decided all the paperback James Patterson books could go to Good
Will while the stacks and stacks and
stacks of YA novels could be donated to the library. The rollaway bin in
the closet, packed to the gills with cozy mysteries... Well, maybe the secondhand bookstore would be interested. Having worked her way to bookcase number
three, Megan said, “What should I do with these?” It’s important to note that
while Megan reads, she is not a book lover. She does not see books as keepsakes
or memories or markers of time. She was asking about the Laura Ingalls Wilder
series—including the lesser known hardback books. I guess it had been a while
since I really looked at Jamie’s shelves. “Put them in my room,” I said, “they’re
mine.”
I hadn’t forgotten the Copyright 1971 books, but I’d
never really thought about how they related to me as a writer. Naturally, I was
compelled to flip through, the stiff yellowed pages smelling of my bedroom back
on Long Island. Or at least I decided
they did. Inside the front cover of each
book, glued to the page, was a mimeographed bookplate. In meticulous third grade scrawl, under “This book belongs to,” was my
signature: Laura Jean Wilson. At nine I was convinced Ms. Ingalls and I shared
a past life because we share the same first name. At ten I’d saved enough money in hopes that
my parents would take me to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Mansfield,
Missouri. Suffice it to say two East Coast parents never could see their way
clear to a trip to the Midwest. While I never made it to the museum, I was, forty years later, struck by how obsessed I’d been with the words. It was
all consuming, enlightening, and, frankly, a little weird. In retrospect, I suppose it makes perfect
sense. Excessive pride of ownership at nine or ten now seems like an
appropriate segue, taking me from reader to writer. How else could anyone justify the endless
hours spent putting stories to paper, unless they’d first spent equal hours
investing in them?
As for Jamie and her books, I stopped Megan at the top
of the stairs. Her blue eyes peered queerly
over the top of the stack. “We’re not
getting rid of them, are we?” she said, deflated. I shrugged, telling her to run to Target and
buy another bookcase. It would be a shame
to get rid of Jamie’s books because, clearly, it may take decades for my voracious
reader-hoarder to figure out what they really mean.
