Cherished junk

There’s so much truth to the saying, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, says Karin Brynard.

MMy oldest sister has a standard reply when you ask her how it’s going: “three bags full”. She’s referring to junk. Because she’s been spring-cleaning – for the past two years already. It all started with her finally retiring after a lifetime of working hard. Really hard. And she’s all used up, she suddenly realised. Kaput. Besides her back and her knees, she’s aching in almost every knuckle and joint in her 68-year-old body.

She started in the storeroom, tackling boxes and boxes of old books – among them school books dating back 60 years. Everything was chucked into black bags for recycling. But her husband nearly had a fit. Those are flippin’ family heirlooms, he exclaimed, aghast.

“Heirlooms se voet,” she retorted. “School history from prehistoric times – bloody old Jan van Riebeeck and The Great Trek three times over, and nothing else. Archaic.” “Precisely! It’s Africana! It belongs in the archives.” “The only place it belongs is in the recycling – to get turned into something useful. Like toilet paper. We have a new history now! Go and ask Hermann Giliomee. Or Julius Malema, for that matter.” My sister grabbed the bag decisively and tossed it in the boot of the car, then got stuck into the next box. It was full of old shoes, some of which were almost 40 years old. Like the pair of patent leather block heels she’d bought for her son’s baptism. She’d shed more tears than the baby during that ceremony because the shoes were pinching like blazes. Into the bin bag they went.

Her husband was, once again, apoplectic. Those are precious, he scolded. And no, she may definitely not throw out his takkies. They might be 20 years old but they’re still brand-new, never mind the torn soles. He just needed to glue them. And he would. Definitely. And she’d better not touch the slippers (which the mice had shredded). His late mother gave those to him. They are totally irreplaceable.

My sister, wisely, held her tongue, but she was scheming darkly: she’d smuggle the box away quietly when he was otherwise occupied.

But she was sadly mistaken. The ever-vigilant watchdog in him had been awakened. No sooner had she touched the storeroom door and he was beside her. She’d sneak into the spare room on tippy toes, clutching a bin bag. Next moment, he’d materialise right there. And, thus, followed a tug-of-war.

My sister’s husband would, for instance, cling fiercely to a box of old neckties. His whole life was reflected in those neatly rolled-up ties: matric farewell, graduation, wedding, first job. Last job. Plus a lifetime of neckwear gifts from the kids – weird macrame-knotted creations and hand-painted jobs, like the one with the Christmas tableau and Baby Jesus looking suspiciously like Batman. The battleground shifted from box to box, each one contested fiercely.

It was when she opened a box of rusty fishing gear that the skirmishes escalated to high opera: he clutched his chest and dramatically called upon the gods.

My dear sister declared a ceasefire, but added an ultimatum: she would stop clearing out his stuff but, in return, he must leave her alone to sort out her own junk as she saw fit.

But he was sly. He waited until she was dozing in front of the TV, then he’d go rummaging around in the bags in the boot. And then suddenly the matric history handbook popped up in the bookcase, discreetly tucked in among the memoirs. Or the ancient Teflon pan, without its non-stick status ever since 1981, was magically resurrected from the car boot bags and arose phoenix-like from the broom cupboard. “What is it with him?” she asked on the phone, perplexed. I pondered my own cupboards, brimming with a lifetime’s hoarded rubbish. It is my proof of life, I realise. It is the graffiti of my story, scrawled upon the grey, unfeeling walls of the vast expanse of time: “Kilroy was here”.

But there comes a time, I know, when you have to let go – even of that porcelain frog that a homeless woman pressed into your hand when you took her some blankets one cold winter’s evening, or the last birthday card from your father before his death. Those things are the treasured snapshots of your life. But to another it’s junk, especially the strangers who will one day cart it all off to the rubbish heap for you. I said this to my sister. Months later, there was suddenly a breakthrough: three bags full in her boot, she reported. They’d filled them together, sharing a bottle of wine and celebrating the full story behind each item. And then they bade them farewell. Tears were shed, and there was laughter.

But anchors had been raised. And freedom found, a lightness of being. And peace. Especially peace.