My Sedimental Journey
While trying to find a vase for a broken rose—a casualty of some Xtreme gardening—I had some thoughts about sentimentality. I set the flower on the counter and opened the cupboard where I’ve long kept a collection of vases—large, small, short, and tall—each with a history. But all my sentimental vases were gone—either donated to Goodwill or neatly packed in storage—victims of recent attempts to pare down my belongings in anticipation of a move to a smaller home. I found an empty spice jar. Not elegant, but functional.
I’ve been married twice. My first husband was not the least bit sentimental. Well, when we first met, he lived in an apartment that could easily have been a museum exhibit—part of an old New Orleans mansion that had very tall ceilings with murals on them. He appreciated the history and magnificence of his living quarters, and wanted to see me seeing this beauty for the first time. Perhaps we could regard that as sentimental.
But he was not a keeper of things. His furnishings were sparse. He enjoyed a single piece of artwork on a large wall. He would never clutter up a room with doodads, furniture, or multiple paintings. He liked space.
I once went on a trip and sent him romantic letters, then returned to discover he’d tossed those letters in the trash after reading them. I was hurt. How could he not want to save my carefully chosen words for all time?
That’s when he proclaimed he wasn’t sentimental.
This was a new concept for me. I’d never met anybody that didn’t keep remembrances, let alone someone who would actually announce a lack of sentimentality. I think I regarded his unromantic proclamation as mental illness. Or at least stunted development.
But there was an advantage to his frame of mind: Despite our having been divorced, I was the executor of his will when he died, and there was really very little for me to do. People took the furniture and appliances they were entitled to, and there were absolutely no piles of stuff to contend with.
Husband number two, however, was as sentimental as they come. OMG! Letters from people he knew as a teenager. Letters from old girlfriends(!) Report cards. Poems. Yearbooks. Journals. Concert programs and ticket stubs. Magazines. Foreign coins. Broken watches. Hats. Loose buttons, photos, pencils, and pens. Stress balls. College textbooks and term papers. And more. Ever the clown, he referred to this sentimental stuff as “sediment.”
Indeed.
During our marriage there were sufficient layers of this sediment on his dresser to nearly kiss the ceiling. There were weighty cartons of his sediment in our communal closet, providing ample camouflage for brown recluse families. And then there were the trunks of haphazard sediment in the storage shed.
It was I who ultimately had to sort through all these ancient artifacts after he died. That is likely why I’m not nearly as sentimental today as I was while he was alive and have culled many of the merely nostalgic items from my own collection of stuff.
I don’t expect to have a husband #3. But that idiom “Never say never” keeps me from absolutely denying the possibility. If it should happen, there’s only one sane solution: A duplex. Each living in our own abode, we can meet out on the veranda. I won’t go into his residence searching for sentimental signs of my existence. And our prenuptial agreement will guarantee a pre-paid cleaning service if he should kick the bucket before me.