Today is the day to de-clutter, or at least to start. Going into the loft is always fraught with dangers, I'm not so nippy on the old pins for a start, but that's not it. I have to ask myself questions like,
" Why am I keeping all these old school books?"
It doesn't bring back the kids' childhoods, but they do trigger memories of little boys I once knew. Sometimes, horror of horrors, I come across a little girl up there. I opened an old Bible and found that round primary school writing that whisked me back to the 1950's when I wrote in pencil and probably had bows in my hair. She and I confront each other with the same questioning stare, in her case I base this imagery on a picture taken to commemorate the Coronation, I don't like to think about what she sees. I know her so well in my head, but she's another person. I have fallen into a habit I had back then of thinking in the third person. Suddenly I'm in the back of the old Standard 9, and I know that if I superimpose that pronoun into my thoughts I can go somewhere in my head and I will find pleasure and excitement. Or rather she will. I choose not to try to repeat this party trick, it's too painful to find you've outgrown that sort of simple enjoyment. I'd rather not be such a know all.
Back down the ladder and onto the landing, where I find box after box of Nathan's stuff all taped up and ready for collection. All that flying the nest stuff comes to mind, but at least he's taking his stuff and going. Joel is more like some ungainly stork, piling up heaps of nesting materials, shedding armloads along the way and trying to find a suitable roosting spot for the night. But for today all is well. Some of the stuff is out of the loft, not much, but some. Joel shows some sign of appreciating that he cannot keep accumulating enough spare clothes to relieve a small Eastern European settlement of displaced people and I am finding the confidence to believe that I'm the sort of person who can make swift and practical decisions about what to keep and what to throw away. Let's hope that when I wake up tomorrow I'm still that person.