Tying Up Loose Ends

Life’s not perfect. Some loose ends may never get trimmed and tidied. 

~Hoda Kotb

On February sixth of this year, I sat down in near exhaustion and began writing to explore my dilemma of "What to do?" My house was messy, my living room bookcase was crowded, the dining room table once again became a landing place for organizing historical notes and unfinished scrapbooks from forty-years ago.

I came up with plans: 

1. Stop thinking and start shelving.

2. Drink a glass of wine and worry about it tomorrow.

3. Quit thinking. Start acting. 

4. Fix dinner and relax for the evening and wake up refreshed.

I chose #4 and after dinner sat down to watch PBS. Seeing the haphazard bookshelves in the background of the man being interviewed gave me an idea of what not to do.  

I woke up refreshed. After breakfast, with the help of my husband we

took everything down from the bookcase including the shelving and started to construct scenic book shelving for our living room.

I nearly finished the shelving but couldn’t reach closure. Something didn’t feel right, something wasn’t balanced, but at least it was not helter-skelter.

I am a great believer in getting one thing done before taking on another task. Staying on task to finish the living room books was my only goal that week. However, Sir Isaac Newton had a theory about that. He said, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” 

"I wonder what his lab looks like?" I muttered to myself. 

In my quest for balance, I reluctantly walked down the hallway to my teaching, storytelling, and professional hidden cupboard of books. I sighed when I opened the door. So much. So much.

Ironically, upon opening the doors fully I noticed several pictures taped to the inside cupboard—pictures of how to decorate shelving. “Yes,” my lungs cried, one of the magazine photos opened my mind. For a couple of days, I played with framed pictures between books and art.

My mood shifted from worried to playful and relaxed. Giving me the energy and focus to clean off the dining room table. I stood back and took a photo of the bookcase. Perfect, I smiled.

 Fixing a glass of iced tea, I sat down to relax and congratulate myself on finishing a project. The more I looked the more something in me felt unfinished. That is when my heart and head came together and asked, “What if I die tomorrow?"

Having been to four funerals in the last six weeks, my emotions apparently were pounding my heart and head where thoughts hidden in crinkled crevices of my mind were buried. I do not want to leave a mess of paper memories for my daughter and her stepbrothers.

With fresh glass of tea in hand, I meandered through the house and out front to the garden where my daffodils and pansies stood in full color in the winter sun. My heart knew there was more to be done and how to do it. As Alan Turing described, “We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty to be done.”

I could no longer hide in my studio even with the sunshine brightening the pale green walls, nor ignore my hallway hidings. Instead of enjoying the view of the birds eating at the feeder out my writing window, all I could sense was clutter: stacks of books, piles of papers and pictures
strewn on the chair and tabletops. In the open-air art closet, I could only see plastic tubs filled with my parents history stacked four feet high, next to that another bookcase with very few books and five shelves of so many-rows of files, art papers, scrapbooks, decorative tubs.

The next day, I pulled up a stool and began pulling books from deep inside the hallway cupboard. One by one I sorted my remaining collection of autographed children’s books. I made only two decisions: keep for Katy or give away to teachers. In less than five days the cupboard and studio showed off their empty spaces to me. In the end my teacher
friends acquired books and comfort puppets for their classrooms, and our adult children will be pleased that some loose ends were trimmed and tidied.