Sorting through closets
by Elouise
Sorting through closets
I’m overcome by sadness
about what?
Beloved outfits, yes
And also reminders of a time
when I was what?
Somebody?
A worker bee all dressed up for slaughter?
A shining star in someone else’s grand career?
I need another outlook
On these outgrown outfits
Consciously assembled to cover
A harmless woman
Not seeking glory or fame
Easy to work with
A good team player
Not given to outlandish clothes
Or calling attention to herself
I’m not mean
I’m neat and tidy
Unpretentious
Don’t mess with me
And by the way
I’m not sure who I am
Today’s work isn’t the end
It’s a beginning
An expansion
Not of what’s in my closet
But in my spirit —
The spirit of our Creator
Whose expansiveness goes
Beyond the boundaries of my small world
Into the vast unexplored territory
Of the woman I am already becoming
Most of my time right now is spent getting things ready for the contractors. They’ll begin work this coming Monday. In the meantime, we’ve been sorting things out, making another dent in our worldly goods.
As relieved as I am to be doing all this, I’m also grieving. The poem above is about going beyond my small world. Still, I carry happy memories of past collaborations with colleagues, and lively courses with students. My clothes are a reminder of good times, not just the other times.
Today I’m expanding. I also feel the drag of my upbringing and life as a woman in college, seminary-land, church, and society in general. I remind myself that our Creator is constantly expanding, moving into new territory, and calling out to us to follow, ready or not.
Elouise♥
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 7 September 2019
Image found at pixabay.com
Telling the Truth 
Dear Elouise, The need to downsize when I separated from my wife and sold the house and moved into a two room unit made me realise how much useless nonsense I had accumulated. So I kept a few of my favourite woodworking tools that I will never use again as ornaments to be displayed upon a mantlepiece, a few of my favourite books including a battered Jerusalem Bible that an old priest gave me – me being a most protestant of Protestants and he being a man of God, a minimum of shirts short and woolen pullovers and as many photographs of people I will not forget. And I will not weep for the clutter.
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Hi, John. Your comments made me smile, especially your last line. David and I have moved seven times, each time fraught with choices about what to leave behind and what to keep. We kept our two children and cat, my piano, and way too many books. To say nothing of clothes, blankets, photos and slides, and a growing assortment of kitchen gadgets. “Useless nonsense” is a great description for too much of it.
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Elouise, May you and David find, as I have in ‘the great downsizing,’ deeper peace and freedom on the other side. I’m doing some work on Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life, and as I read your post I was reminded of her Gift from the Sea:
“One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much. Physical shedding to begin with, which then mysteriously spreads into other fields. Clothes, first. Of course, one needs less in the sun. But one needs less anyway, one finds suddenly. One does not need a closet-full, only a small suitcase-full. And what a relief it is! Less taking up and down of hems, less mending and—best of all—less worry about what to wear. One finds one is shedding not only clothes—but vanity.
“Next, shelter. One does not need the airtight shelter one has in winter in the North. Here I live in a bare sea-shell of a cottage. No heat, no telephone, no plumbing to speak of, no hot water, a two-burner oil stove, no gadgets to go wrong. No rugs. There were some, but I rolled them up the first day; it is easier to sweep the sand off a bare floor. But I find I don’t bustle about with unnecessary sweeping and cleaning here. I am no longer aware of the dust. I have shed my Puritan conscience about absolute tidiness and cleanliness….
“I love my sea-shell of a house. I wish I could live in it always. I wish I could transport it home. But I cannot. It will not hold a husband, five children and the necessities and trappings of daily life. I can only carry back my little channelled whelk [the former home of a hermit crab]. It will sit on my desk in Connecticut, to remind me of the ideal of a simplified life, to encourage me in the game I played on the beach. To ask how little, not how much, can I get along with. To say—is it necessary?—when I am tempted to add one more accumulation to my life, when I am pulled toward one more centrifugal activity.
“Simplification of outward life is not enough. It is merely the outside. But I am starting with the outside. I am looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life—the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living. This is only a technique, a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer. One is free, like the hermit crab, to change one’s shell.” (Lindbergh, Anne Morrow. Gift from the Sea, pp. 24-25, and 28-30. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)
Continue to relish the journey!
Laurie
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Hi, Laurie. Thanks for this wonderful quotation! I love her little ‘game,’ as she puts it: “…how little, not how much, can I get along with.” I’m sorry this response is so late. We’ve just had our internet connection restored! 🙂
Elouise
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I often stare at the history of a wardrobe and wonder…sometimes with a chuckle and a ”what the heck were you thinking” but only when overwhelmed, will I throw it all into a bag and donate…later wondering, what ever happened to that shirt/dress/unicorn outfit☺️most excellent piece of poetry, I can relate💕
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Yep! I know the feeling–especially if it was purchased long ago. The overwhelmed moment sometimes feels like the “I’m too tired to think about it anymore” moment, which means Trash it! So…the more I throw or give away, the easier I hope it becomes. 🙂
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