Almost ripe, the apple

I guess some people are born a certain way, like artists or blue eyed…

Have I just become a hoarder,

or have I been carrying it in my blood all along?

Raised by members of a family that wouldn’t throw away things easily, at least not without a last fight, it was only natural that I myself was to become a nostalgic collector, a living and breathing “Supermarket in Old Peking”, if you will.

A hoarder.

I wouldn’t know when it all started exactly, but I know that a big part of it are my grandparents’ stories – extremely dramatic or utterly amusing, mostly war related and how, because of it, they were left with nothing apart from the clothes on their backs in a blink of an eye. But after a lifetime of savings, they could finally afford a beautiful apartment close to the park, in one of the greenest and most quiet districts of Bucharest – my mother and I would both play with toys, have our homework corrected by grandmother and learn some of life’s most valuable lessons thirty years apart from each other: never take anything or anyone for granted; never,under any circumstance laugh at someone’s disabilities, treat everyone equally, fight for your independence and always be modest.

My grandparents used to keep a notebook, an inventory of all their daily, weekly, monthly, yearly expenses: bills, items bought, purpose and purchase date. Luxurious and expensive items were absolutely out of the question. Most things were home related, any personal items were only  bought if absolutely necessary. They led me to believe that somehow this was the secret to a healthy marriage and an uncomplicated life where I would never go through what they have been through. A notebook that would turn me into my very own accountant/financial advisor.

 

Some of the things they have been through make me wonder if my peers would not only have the necessary skills to survive, but be strong and determined enough to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again after traumatising experiences such as war and extreme poverty. And how many of us, spoiled brats, would know what to do in a real fight with a real enemy who’s pointing a real gun to our heads and not as in some virtual reality bs game we play from a comfortable armchair at the end of a party, out of boredom?

From the other side of my family, grandmother was becoming a hoarder herself, out of loneliness. She didn’t get to see us very often, so everything she had was either from or for us. She lived at the countryside, in Comana – a green, unspoiled village with a very old monastery, a peony reservation with an entire festival dedicated to it, a river and the second largest delta in Romania, where unique birds and animals live and breed still unencumbered by civilization. Her husband – grandfather – died young, we never got to meet each other.

Not many alterations have been made to the house, which almost makes it my father and his sister’s childhood museum.

And I used to love the house; it would magically bring us all together on week-ends and back when grandma was still alive. All cars parked outside (mostly Dacia 1300’s and my uncle’s orange Volswagen camper van), unending dinners in the garden, staying up till late playing Rummykub, listening to the crickets and the late night radio programmes. There would be music and laughter and my mother would say “Cheers”, take a red bitter sip of our home made wine and probably win a game or two and I would learn a thing or two about losing. We would always be surrounded by animals lying at our feet, under the table or on our laps. Little wild flower covered tombs in the backyard remind me of all our dogs names almost in chronological order.

  

The house today, a beautiful wreck with dangerously low ceilings and cracked walls where you can hear mice scratching, struggling to make their way through and hungry Scutigera coleoptata centipedes crawling out from the cracks, looking for more diverse food. A house filled with outdated objects of no use, some so unintentionally well hidden along the years that no one even remembers their existence anymore. A house that swallows everything: my parents’ youth, my first armoire, parts of our lives, dead flower bouquets from parties and gifts that wouldn’t fit on any other shelves, but these. Electrical wires covered in rust and spiderwebs, lightbulbs, incomplete coffee mug sets, three legged chairs and single handled vases, a wooden cat whose nose, ears and tail have been eaten by Puppy in a moment of complete and utter boredom, black spotted mirrors on the walls and even a flash light that sends messages in Morse code. Five TV sets, only one working. Such old photographs, that less and less members of my family remember the faces and names attached to them. To me, they’re sadly all the same, just old strangers from the 60’s and 70’s with funny haircuts and uncomfortable, inexpressive smiles, posing in weird ways. Some of the photographs have been dated and signed, most of them have not, entire generations that will forever be forgotten because they haven’t done anything worth remembering.

I bet both my and my father’s baby clothes are also there, somewhere. Our house, the proof that “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”.

But father is the worst hoarder of all (or the best – I’m not completely sure how this works). He holds on to everything. And when I say everything, I mean I sometimes can’t even get him to throw away a napkin or a plastic bag… Somewhere in his house there is a large bag filled with smaller bags. “Just in case. You never know when you will need a bag…or twenty-eight of them.”

And then it hits me: hoarding is about being afraid. Afraid of losing, afraid of letting go, afraid of forgetting. Hoarding is lingering and addictiveness. It’s sad and beautiful and it makes you associate some things that apparently have nothing in common, like thyme and your mother, or the sound of a laughter behind you, with your eighteenth birthday. And it can sometimes lead to discovering a small treasure around, or within yourself.

And maybe just a little bit about falling in love with yourself and everything you’ve touched.

The more I think about it, the funnier it seems that I’ve recently discovered a whole stash of bags in my room, some of them from when I first set foot in this country, almost three years ago. And…they keep piling up. I guess I’m not a thrower away either. I too get attached to things or, better yet, let them get attached to me. Two tickets to a Jose James concert, a receipt for five cans of cat food in Dubrovnik, my old, cancelled bank card, a pyjama from my mother, small pieces of paper that read “I love you” from a guy at work, a bunch of Kinder toy pieces, the telephone number, address and email of an american lady who lives in San Francisco, miniature whiskey bottles, pens and pencils and lighters that never work when you need them to, a small ring collection (because I have a thing for rings now) at least seventy five tabs simultaneously open on my laptop on the most unrelated subjects: Japanese rice crackers, Spiro Agnew, Veep season 3 episode 6, Clarice Cliff single handled vase, Antoine Lavoisier, The mirror stage etc.

I guess…the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

 

Dress, no name

Kimono, Stradivarius

Necklace, thrifted

Basket, vintage

GreenEyed Kisses,