Sacrificing the Cake

I'm afraid I've lost too much of my sentimentality in my four years of college. Maybe it was the constant packing-up of my life each summer and changing homes again each fall. Maybe it's the fact that I never practiced homesickness and missing people because I kept in touch with my family and friends through Skype and Facebook. Or maybe it was living in New York, where so much more than simple sentiment demanded my attention, and growing into an adult meant learning to take life's hard parts with a stony exterior.

I hardly think my transition into adulthood is complete. College life, with its insignificant tests and grades and ignorance of most things financial, should never be mistaken for real life. Still, I have noticed my own shift toward (or increase in?) stoicism, especially when choosing what to throw out while cleaning. I choose to be unfeeling where sometimes my mom can't (or perhaps couldn't, since under my influence and her own will her sentimentality has now started hardening too). After that first summer of de-cluttering in 2008, it became clear that we didn't have enough physical space to afford being sentimental with our possessions. Even the smallest reminders of my childhood continue to be tossed in the "recycle" pile - endearing drawings of "parnsass jazmin" from Aladdin, countless adorable art projects, knickknacks formerly treasured for some nostalgic value...

I do worry that thirty or fifty years from now, I will regret erasing the things that I'm sure I would have loved to rediscover as an old lady with a family and grandchildren (?!). I've already let them soak in a closet of memories and enjoyed finding them as forgotten treasures at 21, so imagine the warm and fuzzy feeling of nostalgia matured for a few more decades. If a twenty-something smiles fondly at precious childhood misspellings and past obsessions (pages and pages of X-Men stick figures and Ninja Turtles with pizzas, anyone?) I'm sure a forty-something should at least tear up a little. And honestly, who doesn't relish that nostalgic misty feeling?

In fact, I think there is a fine line between the sentimentality and nostalgia of a "normal" person and a hoarder. We always cherish the good times of our past when we think about them. I will admit to even revisiting activities and environments of my past to recreate that comfort zone, reading old favorite books and personal journals or reminiscing with friends to bring myself back. Having physical symbols of that old comfort zone we can keep forever can feel incredibly fulfilling. We attach a lot to mementos, and I have seen firsthand how hard it can be to toss things like drawings from our grade school selves; they can seem like gifts from our past to our present, and discarding a gift can be a hugely symbolic act.

It's difficult and inadvisable to choose between one extreme (saving everything) and the other (discarding everything). I'm grateful that today we have so many alternatives that let us have our cake and eat it too; we can store memories digitally through photos or words while keeping the clutter down. I think even writing words that aren't directly about the things I've let go, words that instead record my emotional processing of the things, can work. Lifehacker did a step-by-step guide to sorting through memorabilia yesterday. For our family's purposes, I think sacrificing tangible souvenirs is the only way we'll get anywhere.

But I'll still have my cake. Just in another form.