Attic Sweep

Dusting off memories is part of fall cleaning

By: SALLY FRIEDMAN

‘It


turned out to be the garment bag full of prom dresses that really, truly
got to me. Inside that zipped bag were the gauzy dreams of three daughters
in assorted colors.’

— Sally Friedman

"Illustration
Illustration
by Judy Martin
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   It was to be a minor fall cleaning, a kind of search and
destroy mission targeted at excesses in our attic. We were going to give it
an hour, tops.
   So, my husband and I climbed up those wooden steps done up
in our most disreputable clothes to take a stab at the piles of cartons that
we’d been promising to weed out for merely the past 10 years. But, today
was the day.
   From the moment we started leaning over those dusty cartons
and assorted plastic bags, I knew this was never, ever going to be a one-hour
deal. Not with our entire family history spread out before us on the attic floor.
   For the next four hours, two people who had pledged to be
ruthless — to purge and then purge some more — found ourselves misty
with nostalgia, lost in reverie, and incapable of doing anything much more than
sitting amid the debris asking one another how in the world it had all slipped
away so fast.
   There was the carton marked "Nancy — School Stuff"
heaped to the brim with our youngest daughter’s first crude attempts at
printing, all lopsided "A’s" and fat, misshapen "C’s."
There were Nancy’s personal waterloo, rows of backwards "Z’s"
that bore the graceful hand of her first grade teacher with the words "Try
this again, Nancy."
   Such delicious memories leaped from the pages of that little
copy book, such images of Nancy, now the mother of an almost-first-grader herself,
hunched over the kitchen table with her long hair falling on her face as she
struggled to get those "Z’s" right. When she finally did, I still
remember how we celebrated with chocolate milk and vanilla wafers, her idea
of heavenly dining.
   My husband and I tried — but couldn’t dispose of
the grotesque wedding gift we’d stashed away so many years ago, the archetypal
"Why would anyone buy this?" gift from a long-gone aunt and uncle.
   We could never figure out what this odd piece of pottery was
for. A serving plate? An objet d’art? An oversized ashtray back in the
days when people still smoked with impunity?
   All these years, it had languished in various attics and basements,
moving with us wherever we went. To discard it now felt like heresy — and
besides, just looking at its ugly contours made us laugh, and in a serious world,
that counts for something.
   We tried — we really tried — to purge the attic
of the autograph books and play programs, Jill’s fifth grade class pennant,
Amy’s eighth grade soccer trophy.
   We swore we’d ditch the old drapes from our first master
bedroom, the ones we’d selected with such care and pride. But one of us
— never mind who — insisted that they, too, were a part of our family
history, an artifact of early marriage that needed to be preserved.
   It turned out to be the garment bag full of prom dresses that
really, truly got to me. Inside that zipped bag were the gauzy dreams of three
daughters in assorted colors: Jill’s first grown-up gown, an ivory with
lacy sleeves and velvet trim that she’d selected as if her very destiny
hinged on its precise cut; Amy’s wildly frivolous lavender gown, all flounces
and ruffles and so very Amy-esque; and Nancy’s delicate pink prom gown
with rosebuds at the shoulders, immortalized in dozens of prom night photos.
   Discard these pieces of our daughters’ collective past?
   Never.
   Which is how it came to pass that despite the best intentions,
exactly two plastic bags made their way down the attic steps from the "major"
clean-up. In them were old dried flowers, some broken picture frames, a few
chipped dishes and the fabric scraps that would never become anything else.
   The attic was still packed with the flotsam and jetsam of
a family’s years on this earth, still overflowing with trifles that nobody
else would want, except us.
   And isn’t that, after all, just what attics are for?