…”Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
Mid 2010, I’m setting my sights on financial health. It’s a constant goal of mine, but I’m upgrading it to the active-consciousness-cat-bird seat. While unearthing the Easter baskets from the attic this month, I came across a box of my old financial records. When I saw the papers’ dates, I knew that according to Suze Orman, my plaid-jacket-clad money sensei, they could be shredded. But I wanted a more symbolic farewell to my old bank statements and student loan promissory notes. I wanted to send a smoke signal to myself and to the Universe that I’m hereby taking care of my money garden. So I flipped through the files, removed all the paper clips,and tossed the papers into the fireplace. Checks with an older, loopier version of my handwriting tried to hook my sentimentality as I laid them on the andirons. How is it possible that I remember all the payees from eighteen years ago? Even the itinerant tropical plant seller from my first year of graduate school. I tracked her down a month later and demanded a refund when all the mite-infested plants died. The forty dollars I got back was recorded in one of the printouts now turning to ash.
The pile took longer than I thought to light. But I persisted, and it caught. My son woke early from his nap. The fireplace is right by our stairwell and a wisp of smoke wafted upstairs near his room. “Whadilly doing, mom?” he called from his bed. “Spring cleaning,” I said.
Bravo for spring cleaning and for taming the oversized sentimentality for that old check that was written ON THE SAME DAY (6 hours prior) that our lst born entered the world? Why MUST those checks (or other such trivial scraps of paper) NOW take on such oversized importance ? Will we not remember that day, anyway? So let the check, etc. go – as we watch the smoke curl up into the atmosphere to join other memory wisps, floating, floating, floating