Just call me Elsa

Finding the courage to let go.

My mother tended to collect and hold onto stuff. Old books, Fiestaware, family secrets, photo albums, generational trauma. Mom took these things and held them close, packed them in cardboard boxes and the recesses of her heart, trapped them in the dark where they wouldn’t be seen. Part of it was cultural, she lived in the era before counseling and mental heath advocacy. But it was also just part of who she was as a person, and the family in which she was raised.

When I moved from Oregon to Tennessee, Mom sent with me a dozen boxes marked “Family, for later” or “Photo albums, not urgent.” I left most of the boxes untouched, opening and resealing them occasionally when we moved from one home to the next. Since Mom’s unexpected death in the fall of ‘19, I haven’t touched a thing. I haven’t had the physical or emotional energy for it. The boxes stay packed and stacked in closets and under beds, while avoidance and self-preservation keep me functioning. But mice and brown recluses love cardboard, and shame and fear love secrets. I’m 46 years old and frankly I’m quite all done with both.

For the last month I’ve been cleaning out everything in my home. Every shelf, every closet, every box. I realize I’m more like Mom than I care to admit, holding onto items I think I’ll use, keeping things out of attachment or obligation. It’s overwhelming to the heart and home, and I’m letting go of so many things, both physical and emotional. It’s scary and vulnerable, with constant overtones of guilt for getting rid of things that were gifts or family “treasures.”

In 1982 my mom bought two HO-scale model trains sponsored by the Campbell soup company. Each car and engine advertise a different Campbell’s product from Chunky Soups to Spaghetti-Os. She gifted one to Grandpa and the other stayed in a box for - go ahead, do the math - for 42 years. I’ve had it in my possession for at least 10. Sometimes I consider assembling it around the Christmas tree, mostly I think about selling it on eBay for the whopping $100 at which it’s valued, which is barely worth the time and effort involved in online sales. Every year I shut the box and put it away “to figure out later.”

Y’all, later was yesterday.

Piper and I drove to the Tennessee Central Railway Museum to visit their hobby shop. 200 square feet of tracks, trains, and memorabilia, a hobbyists dream but quite uninspiring to me. The gentleman at the counter greeted us kindly and asked how he could help us. I offered him a donation of a vintage HO train in its original boxes. He looked at me skeptically; I probably look like someone who doesn’t know shit about model trains (because I don’t) and I was wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “I like books more than people” (because I do.) He opened the box and inspected the parts and pieces, and confirmed that he could absolutely sell the set. The proceeds would benefit the railway museum and its programs. “It’s all yours!” I relinquished. He closed the box with its crackled and peeling tape, my mother’s maiden name of Campbell, our mailing address from when we rented from Lloyd and Nellie, and he took from me a weight I didn’t realize I’d been carrying.

I didn’t want or need that train. I kept it because Mom asked me to and I obeyed. But we don’t have to keep everything our family gives us, not the secrets or the trains or the trauma or the vinyl-paged, nicotine-stained photo albums. We can process our grief, write down our stories, pull out and keep the snapshots that matter most. The rest we are empowered to get rid of. Donate it, sell it, throw it the fuck away. Stop carrying burdens that were never ours in the first place. Let go, and make space in our hearts and homes for whatever comes next.

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