Love Notes: The Yearbooks
A positive side effect to the dreadful misery of cabin fever that comes with bronchitis would be that you experience a jolt of productivity in the clutter-clearing department. And when you are married to Alex Byland, well, this is a very good thing.
We are a couple of extremities. On my (more attractive, successful, productive) side you’ve got your typical type-A, neurotic, anxious, OCD, ISTJ intensity. On his (more likable, friendly, playful) side you’ve got your typical type-B, calm, balanced, easy-going, ESFP male.
And he’s also a closet hoarder.
There. I said it. The man doesn’t throw anything away. And it is for nothing more than pure laziness. As luck would have it (luck likes to laugh at me), circumstances left him with all of his childhood possessions when we moved into our apartment many moons ago. I’m talking half used scotch tape, dusty comic strips and teddy bears. Oh, the most pitiful, scary collection of stuffed animals you’ve ever seen. Goodwill wouldn’t even take these things.
And in typical hoarder fashion, they just hung out in our guest bedroom and our closets for eighteen months. Silly Tina. I really thought he’d use our big move to our big kid home as an excuse to finally sort through the stuff. Instead they took the fifteen minute drive in the back of his 1999 Mazda 626 (filthy as well) to our new home. Where they have stayed, pile after pile, crate after crate for over three years. They’ve grown, too. Of course they have.
Things can get really boring when you’re on house arrest because you’re cough scares the general population. So while everyone you know is seeing Les Mis without you, you find the most creative ways to entertain yourself. Enter Alex’s hoarded piles of childhood junk.
In all, over two weeks, I increased our trash piles threefold, donated six boxes, and filled our recycling bin to the brink of explosion. And it felt good. I was rather harsh about what would be kept. Give me a break- if he hadn’t referenced a binder full of professional development on downs syndrome by now, he wasn’t going to need to.
So in the midst of the ditching and pitching rhythm (which feels really good by the way), I came across every. single. yearbook. k-12. Such a sentimental soul. And I laughed at my husband (to myself, I promise). But then I remembered this particularly sunny day when I was about eight years old, sprawled out across the floor in the living room completely enthralled in Dow Senior High School’s senior yearbook. There were my parents, my aunts and uncles, their friends whom I’d heard story after story about. They all were there. Long, hippie hair and homemade bell-bottoms. And I spent that afternoon making up the most magnificent stories about their hallway gossip and the pictures they plastered to the inside of their lockers.
I was never going to throw the yearbooks away. But, by definition of being such a pragmatic soul, I hadn’t really thought too much about the plus side of Alex’s hoarder nature. He’s kept me from throwing away some rather important stuff. A piece of driftwood, for example. Or the cards from each Valentine’s Day and anniversary. They don’t take up that much space, after all.
And I hope that one day our son and daughter stumble upon that stack of yearbooks and learn that, why yes, their Swedish redhead of a father did have cornrows in 10th grade.
