spring cleaning

Yesterday felt like it could be spring sometime soon. Well, soonish.

It was about 50 degrees, the sun was shining, the ice fishermen had retreated off Mascoma Lake, and I was wearing outerwear without sleeves. The vest made its spring 2k11 debut. Hallelujah.

June, however, remained impossibly bundled. Long sleeved onesie, long-sleeved romper, fuzzy coat, hat and legwarmers. She was exposed to the elements for a sum total of about 75 seconds while we ran errands. I can't have that gal feeling chilly. Just ask my mom about the 1983 Cricket Camp group photo and the only kid wearing a sweater. The only kid out of about 150. In July.

The impossibly bundled apple doesn't fall far, I reckon.

We were out to lighten our sartorial load, dropping several boxes and a Hefty bagful of clothes at the secondhand store. It felt good to declutter, but I have trouble unloading stuff so there was a little apprehension. And that's all it was, stuff. Ill-fitting pants, uncomfortable, worn-out shoes, shrunken shirts, moth-aerated sweaters; crap. Gone, out, away with you. With reservations.

I still have too much, but one traumatic cleanse at a time.

One category conspicuously absent from our dropoff was baby clothes. June's old enough that she has grown out of quite a bit -- a large plastic bin's worth of items, and every day the lot is expanding. But that pile is staying put. Yes, yes, for if/when we have another, sure. But even if June winds up our only child, that bin of doll-sized clothing is making every move with us, so help me.

I have mentioned before that I have several pregnant friends. Ladies, I love you, I really do, but I'm afraid I can't part with these clothes. I just can't do it. Yup, even that set of boy's jammies she never wore. But she could have worth them, therefore I will never part with them.

Our friends Val and Chris loaned us so much clothes, gear and equipment after their son outgrew them that we're unsure of how to begin to thank them. It was unyielding. I really wish I could be more of a pay-it-forward kind of person like Val or Chris, but I'm coming to terms with the idea that I'm just more of a pay-it-stay-exactly-where-you-are kinda broad.

Greg's reading this and shaking his head, I'm sure. The guy has spent months of his life living in the wilderness, employing only the no-frills survival items in his backpack. I pack a "just in case" tube of mascara when I run out to buy milk. Somehow he loves me.

But this isn't pack rat-ism, this is June. It's the white terrycloth romper we took her home from the hospital in, the "junebug jammies" from Momo, the hat my mom knitted her. The turd-stained onesies unfit for human re-use. But I will never get rid of those. NEVER!

Then there are the extra-wee (unused) diapers I held on to, the blue and pink striped tuques the hospital staff put on her after she was born, and those pill-prone swaddling blankets printed with baby footprints that I would sleep with while the nurses were watching June so we could rest. I think a lot of people can identify with me not wanting to let go of these things.

More vividly than her actual birth, I recall that first night she was alive, and Cindy, the know-it-all but sweet night nurse on duty, opening the heavy door and pushing aside the curtains to head into our room. She was wheeling June in what Greg liked to call "the casserole dish," that elevated, plastic-sided crib-on-wheels, and when the light from the hallway hit our baby's face, I felt my heart seize. Her slate eyes peeping out underneath that tuque were saucers, canvassing the room through what must have been newborn wax paper. Her mouth was open in this perpetual look of delighted surprise, with her little tongue darting in and out -- a miraculously engineered hunger signal. No cries, no squirms, just wide-eyed fascination wrapped up like a gyro. I remember gasping, saying "Junebug, I missed you!" then crying as she looked into my face, both of us dazed, exhausted, but too interested in each other to blink. Greg stirred from the world's most uncomfortable pullout couch across the room as Cindy walked out. And there we were. Tuques, swaddle blankets and three happy saps.

Lest you think I'm purely sentimental and not bat-you-know-what insane, I've also saved the three pee-logged, pink-striped home pregnancy tests indicating our little Bug was headed Trotter-ward. That ain't right.

Missions like yesterday's make me feel good that I am capable of purging meaningless junk from my life and am not necessarily headed down a Spoose-like path.

Now, I love my grandfather to pieces, I "couldn't carry his shoes," to quote him, but the man knows how to hang on to old shite. Having gotten sucked into a "Confession: Animal Hoarders" marathon not long ago, I think I can now distinguish the difference between illness and idiosyncrasy. But years ago when I was dispatched (punished?) to Phoenix to help my grandparents pack up their home for their move back to the Chicago area, the behavior seemed to lean heavily into Column A.

Hearing the string of cusswords coming from their garage-cum-storage facility, followed immediately by the violent sneezes of someone who has happened upon a most potent strain of dust, the kind that attaches itself to 12 to 14 shoe shine kits, Moose appeared with a red plastic keg cup filled with vodka, handing it to me with a wink.

It was 10 a.m.

That vodka did help, the bottomless keg cup that it was, but I found myself in need of something a lot stronger when I unearthed some notable items. There was the printer paper carton full of yearly date books, at least two dozen of them, with only Spoose's name filled out in each; the lockbox full of car keys, none of which operated their current automobile; and my personal favorite, the file box stuffed with cards bearing glossary terms from the 1979 Arizona Real Estate exam. To my knowledge, this is not an exam Spoose ever took.

I unloaded a Dumpster's worth of Spoose's crap, which Moose later informed me he retrieved after I flew home. She says, "Oh, there's something wrong with him." He says he's a child of the Depression. Annoying as it was, I can see where he's coming from. I have the year-old positive E.P.T's to prove it.

My dad winces when you mention the Original Six hockey jerseys that were left curbside for garbage pickup, or the boxes of family photos indiscriminately tossed. But if you need several copies of the remarks made by a parishoner at a Thanksgiving Day Mass at Sacred Heart Church seven years ago, I know where you can find them (Seriously. On Moose's desk. Right now.)

A few weeks ago Moose said she was on a tear looking for something she misplaced in a recent move. In her efforts, she found an unfamiliar box. Opening it she discovered a palmful of yellowed tictacs. She showed them to Spoose.

"Oh, those are my baby teeth."

Moose laughed. "I had no idea he had them."

Neither did I. And boy, am I glad I didn't throw them out.