I’ve always hated the red shed. No. That’s not right. The shed can go to its grave proudly knowing that it performed its job admirably: it provided safety and security to a good many belongings for more than two decades. The red shed can go to rest knowing that it withstood several record-breaking blizzards, plenty of record-breaking winds, many heavy hail storms, and more than one deluge of monsoon rains. Even in its last days, the door with its rotting and falling off trim kept everything inside safe. Even as the red shed is being torn down tomorrow, it can leave this world knowing that even as the walls are rotting away, it has stood tall and strong, and nothing inside ever got wet, moldy or mildewy. If the red shed were a member of our brave military forces, it would deserve a medals for strength, endurance and courage as it prevailed against everything that Mother Nature threw at it. If the red shed had been a soldier, standing tall and proud against the War of Time, it would deserve to have Taps played as its remains are carted off to the city landfill. No. I do not hate the physical part of the shed. My animosity is directed at most of the things that have resided in the red shed over its long life.
In its earliest years, the red shed provided shelter to bags full of plastic bags — grocery bags, bread wrappers, bags used to bring produce home from the grocery store. There were bags and bags of bags, because my mother believed that we could always use the bags for something. There were black trash bags full of plastic containers and lids: old Tupperware, margarine containers, cottage cheese containers, ice cream tubs, because my mother believed that we could always use them to store things in. There were boxes of old bits of electrical appliances: a toaster with a missing cord, the innards of lamps that had broken, broken strings of holiday lights, anything that had a broken cord, because mom believed that she’d get them fixed one day, because they couldn’t be thrown out as she “paid good money” for them. Better to keep them than throw them out. She’d say “Someone might want them. We can’t throw out something that someone else might get use from.”
One of the major accomplishments of my early 30s was finally getting mom to part with the bags of bags, and the bags of plastic containers. The broken electrical parts remained, though, if I’m honest, I’ll admit to throwing out a box or two over the years.
Like any space in her house, my mother does not care for emptiness. If my mother had a personal motto, it would be “If there is an empty place, something must be purchased to fill the emptiness.” After cleaning out the detrius from the shed, there was Emptiness in need of Stuff. Many of the things that accumulated in the garage were moved into the shed. The emptiness in the garage was filled with things from the house.
Over the years, my mom has reluctantly let go of a few things. Yet, the red shed has always remained more of a storage locker than a place for the things to keep up the yard and garden. Finally, though, over the weekend, we cleaned out the shed. Many things went into the trash with mom’s blessing. There were old bird cages, old suitcases, a couple of boxes of old plastic cactuses and silk flowers that my mom bought back in the 1980s when she was redecorating the house in the Southwestern style that was all the rage at the time. The cactuses were all dried out and brittle, the silk flowers, even though they’d been boxed were no longer vibrant. There was a large plastic tub, that we filled with all the old anti-freeze and other old household chemicals, which are now in the garage awaiting the next Household Chemical Roundup. There were old lawn chairs, some old curtains with edges that had been eaten away by mice. Perhaps it would be easier to say what we kept: mom’s mobility scooter (bought a decade ago, and never used, because she’s not that immobile, and, besides, she has me to push her around in the transport chair when we go places); a maple end table with a glass top; a small, patchwork quilt that, remarkably, had not been chewed on by moths or mice, and I had to keep because it was the quilt we used for the puppy I got when I was 5; a small, green, glass planter; two hammers; a wooden gun I made in 6th grade Shop class; a few small containers filled with nuts, bolts, nails. Everything else mom said to get rid of.
We cleaned out the red shed over the weekend. Mom sat in her transport chair, in a shady spot just in front of the doors of the shed, so she could review each thing as it was brought out. As I looked at her, sitting there, an 88-year old woman, reviewing her belongings and pronouncing judgment on them, I was overcome with a strange sense of melancholy. She was willingly, even happily, getting rid of many objects. The fanciful voice in my head saw it in terms of her letting her belongings dwindle down, as her own life is dwindling. She may still be going strong for an 88-year old woman with high-blood pressure, diabetes, fibrillation, a new heart valve, chronic kidney disease, arthritis, gout, and all the aches and pains of the elderly, but, at 88, the time before her is much less than the time that she’s already lived through. So, perhaps, she’s reviewing the past, and letting it go, with the acceptance that everything has its allotted time.
Or, then again, my fanciful voice is being silly.
The Red Shed gets torn down tomorrow.
The new, bigger shed starts being
built the day after. She’s already planning all the things that are going to be moved in when the building is complete.
We’re still trying to decide on a color.
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I just ran across this journal entry dated September 13, 2005, and thought I’d share:
