Objects of Desire
Sometimes at night I dream that my children and I are lost in a stormy sea. Our boat is overturned and we can swim, a little, but we are no match for the currents. The water is fierce and deep and keeps pulling my children from my grasp. I grab one child, hoist him up over the bottom of the boat, then turn just in time to see another slipping away. I lunge with a mother’s determination, seize an arm and hold on tight. None of us is lost during the course of the dream, but by the end, I am despairing — knowing that someone will be, that I cannot keep everyone afloat forever. I wake in a panic. The dream feels too real. I don’t want to go back to sleep.
I first had this dream right about the time that my husband and I introduced our children — then two toddlers and a preschooler — to swimming, shortly before the Christmas tsunami of 2004. I think often of the mothers in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, Thailand and Somalia, especially after the dream strikes, especially this time of year. I cannot imagine how they felt as they tried to rescue their children from the waters, as they made impossible decisions about who to grab, about which way to turn, to run. It occurs to me that my subconscious is trying to work this out: what would I do in that situation? How would I make sure I saved everybody? As if such a thing would be possible, if only I planned properly.
It’s also a reasonable assumption, I think, given my worries and sadness about the war in Iraq, that my dream relates to my grief about the young lives being lost in the Middle East. I feel helpless to do anything to stop the violence. I wonder if the generals on the ground, if George W. Bush, if the mothers and fathers of the soldiers serving there now, are ever haunted by a similar dream.
And then there is a third dream interpretation — more subtle, less dramatic, but one that is important especially, I think, because it represents a threat to my family I may actually be able to do something about. In this version, I am not just the rescuer; I am also the child. One theory of dream interpretation holds that every person in a dream represents an aspect of the dreamer. Yes, I am the mother, the rescuer, the one who tries to keep everyone safe. But I am also the one being buffeted by an overwhelming force, the one in danger of slipping away, of drowning in a sea of things that choke and buffet those I love.
This is the image that comes to me on Christmas Day, as I gaze at the ocean of wrapping paper and plastic packaging that lies discarded on our floor. There is no room to walk. And this was the year that we decided to scale back, to take it easy, to get a grip on Christmas commercialization in our family. Two or three presents per child, in addition to the tangerines and yo-yo’s and dot-to-dot books in our children’s stockings. It seemed perfectly reasonable. So why, once the presents were opened — and the radio-operated dinosaur and dragon were roaring, and the puzzle pieces were strewn about the floor — did it all feel so overwhelming?
This example is trivial in contrast to the potential real-life drowning of children. It is also very, very tangible and immediate. Some days, it feels like things are, in countless small ways, squeezing the life — or perhaps just the patience, the once-pleasant disposition — right out of me. No wonder monks and nuns take vows of poverty. Who could be holy while managing several people’s mountains of crap? “You know the value of every article of merchandise,” writes my beloved Rumi, “but if you don’t know the value of your own soul, it’s all foolishness.”
As a family of five living in a two-bedroom bungalow, we’ve always struggled with space. I bought the little house in 1995 for myself, thinking I’d live there a few years before moving on to something bigger and better. But then I got married, and then we had kids, and then our children made wonderful friends their same age, who live right on our street. As it turns out, we can’t imagine anything “better.” But bigger, we need. There’s no quiet space in this house where I can work, no room of her own to which we can send our daughter when she loses her temper and a needs a place to cool down.
So my husband and I recently decided to embark on remodeling. The architects are finishing our plans; we’re about to choose a contractor. Soon, we’ll move out for the duration and have already begun the initial packing up. As I dig through the detritus of the playroom — broken crayons and plastic Polly Pocket dresses, old Tak and the Power of JuJu toys from Happy Meals and smashed plastic fruit for the play kitchen — I think, How did we get here? The basement is filled with hand-me-down furniture from my parents (what to do with the old wooden cradle I slept in as a baby?), games with missing pieces (and random pieces with no games), a busted puppet theater and broken play fishing rods with piles of plastic fish, and years’ worth of paperwork to be sorted and filed. In the kitchen: junk drawers crammed with missing buttons, curling 32 cent stamps, dead batteries, rocks collected on family vacations, and plastic thing-a-ma-jigs that look important, that surely must go with something. Everywhere I turn, there’s stuff that has to be stored somewhere, and nowhere to put it. It’s no wonder I feel like I’m drowning. No wonder, no matter how much I long to connect with the Sacred, I find it hard to slow down, to find a quiet spot; to relax, center, to be.
And so, while I tend to dismiss New Year’s resolutions as gimmicky and generally unhelpful, I also find myself facing 2008 with a sense of quiet resolve. The Year of De-Junking, I will call it. Or The Year of Pitching the Crap. I may be fooling myself. I know that a clutter-free house is not a prescription, per se, for a richer inner life. But I also know that I feel tired and overwhelmed, and that my spiritual development is the least of Madison Avenue’s concerns.
“Mama,” my son Will instructs me, after watching TV. “Don’t use scissors or craft cutters. Use Craft Light Cutters, and it comes with six craft liner cutters — things you can cut, and there’s zig-zag, too. You should really buy it. It’s really good.” He is a big fan of commercials and loves to tell me which air freshener, which laundry detergent, which lunchmeat I should buy.
“But it’s just a commercial, honey.” I tell him. “The people who made it just want me to buy what they’re selling. It doesn’t mean what they say is true. They’re tricky.”
“It really is good,” Will insists, and walks away, not believing my stubborn ignorance.
Rumi writes, too: “The mind is an ocean . . . I and so many worlds are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!” That’s not all that’s rolling there. As I pack for our remodel, I think about the Texas-sized “island” of garbage in the Pacific that I heard about not long ago on NPR — the plastic bags and useless paraphernalia thrown out by people like me, who have so much, and yet who keep on buying more. While filling bags and boxes with objects to sell, to give away, and to throw out, I think about the commercialization of kids, about the savvy marketers, and about my soul’s fight to stay afloat amidst it all. I think about a statistic I recently heard: that 99 percent of the products we buy become garbage within six months. I make fresh vows to stay out of the mall, not to buy another thing I don’t really need. I murmur a silent prayer that the new space our family is creating will remain spacious; that we will refrain from filling it with more junk — most of it produced by people who themselves have too little, whose lives are made worse by every inane purchase. And with each item I toss, I feel like I am reaching out a hand — to save my family, my children, my world. Myself.
7 replies on “Objects of Desire”
Great column! I read a LIBRARY copy of Judith Levine’s “Not Buying It: My Year without Shopping” last year and vowed to try it. I’ve fallen waaaaaaaaaaay short of my goal, but it’s great to keep mindful about…thanks.
Shari, I am SO WITH you!!! I am hoping that this year will also be the year of Pitching All The Crap. Our problem is that we have a big house with TOO Much Room and we keep fillllllling it up…. Good luck with it! And the remodel sounds very exciting, or it will be when it’s done, anyway.
Do you have Freecycle (it’s a yahoo group) where you live? I love it, because it’s a way to give things away within the community. And get things (though that’s not your goal right now). I relied heavily on Freecycle during last fall’s purge (it felt so GOOD to get the stuff I didn’t need directly to people who did) and earlier, when my daughter needed a one foot segment of barbed wire for an art project she was doing, I posted a notice and within an hour somebody had delivered a piece to my door!
Wonderful essay–so well thought-out and well written, covering what I’ve been feeling lately. It seems like, if I could just sort out the filing cabinet, or organize the basement, then I could get on with my real life…right? I’ve resolved to buy nothing new in the New Year (with a few exceptions)–to learn to make things, or make do without things–and just making that decision has been so freeing! At the same time, I want to de-junk, like you, and to create space in our small home (also two bedrooms, three kids), and show for my kids that there is so much more to life than buy, buy, buying.
Shari, in the ocean of ‘junk’ out there on the internet, your writing is a precious jewel! Thank you as always for sharing your wisdom. I’m in the midst of my own decluttering, and it really does make a difference. We can create a true sense of spaciousness in our lives–in our homes, our schedules, our overly-filled brains!! peace & love to you and your family during your transition!
Over the past two years we moved twice. The first house was a spacious 2600 square foot house with five bedrooms. We have ended up in a 1600 square foot town house. I purged before the first move and it was a shame how much unnecessary stuff we had accumulated. I gave many things away and still had more to give away during the second move. I couldn’t believe it. I am still working on resisting the urge to buy more thow pillows, and the extra towels (things liek that), but mostly I’ve kept our home clutter-free. My only issue is the toys! People buy them for our daughters and they jsut pile up. I am really feeling it now since the holiday season and both of my girls have fall birthdays. I think I am going to ask friends and family to contribute to our girls’ college fund in lieu of toys for birthdays and/or christmas. Thanks for this gentle reminder about second and third order effects of our sometimes useless purchases.
Shari,
What a beautiful essay. I read it at just the right time: It’s a brand-new year, my mother is critically ill, and I feel totally engulfed by the crap all over my house and in my head. The urge to pitch and purify is overwhelming lately, and your essay captured that sense and made me feel validated. I also liked the way you addressed the issue of kids and commercials; how the material bug bites so early. Thanks for this piece.