Cleaning Drawers, Saving Memories

Used to be that whenever I'd call my mom - and I mean, seriously, EVERY time - I'd ask her what she was doing and her answer would be, "I'm cleaning out a drawer." One time it might be the drawer in the kitchen with all of her recipes. Another time it might be her underwear drawer. Or a drawer with family photos. It got to be a running joke with us. It got so I would just begin the conversation - with no hello or anything - "What drawer you cleanin' out now?" Naturally, she'd get finished with every drawer in the house and then just start over again. Years and years of cleaning out drawers and really never cleaning anything out.

I think I began to see a lifelong pattern when a friend of Kate's interviewed my mom about her recollections of WWII. My uncle was a paratrooper who landed in Normandy and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, so my mom's family was, as were nearly all families, directly linked to the war. Annie asked my mom what she was doing when she found out the war was over. Mom thought for a minute and then said, "Cleaning out a drawer!" Not even kidding. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

Over the last few years I've come to realize that those drawers hold the precious memories of my mom's life. I am the Rambo of cleaning out drawers. I can move through a desk in under ten minutes and eliminate its contents by half. I take no prisoners. Not mom. She looks at every piece of paper, every photo, every trinket. And it's not just a passing glance. She has a little conversation in her head about each item: "So and so gave me that recipe. I think I made it once." Does it go in the pitch pile? NO. Because somebody she cared about gave it to her.

A couple of weeks ago mom and I were at an antique store and she spied a set of lawyer's bookshelves that also had card catalog drawers. About six drawers wide and four or five deep. Her bright blue eyes lit up and she said, "Look at all those drawers . . . I could put so much stuff in those!"

Maybe I'll start a drawer cleaning campaign, but it will be a kinder gentler drawer cleaning campaign than my pillages of the past. Maybe I'll linger over the odds and ends I find and try to recollect how it made its way into my life. Then I'll have to face the fact that my favorite fridge magnet is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It says "Please tell me I haven't become my mother." When it's all said and done, though, I'd be lucky if I became the kind of woman my mom is. I already have her sense of humor. She's the one who gave me the magnet.