The Basement Cleaning Chronicles

My parents’ basement is just like any other unfinished concrete basement—damp, cold, and dimly lit only by the single light bulbs hung sporadically overhead. When my mom asked me to come over and help clean and reorganize, I was expecting lots of dust, a few dead bugs, and more papers and drawings from my grade school years than would fit in the dumpster they were having delivered the next week.

I drove over on a Saturday afternoon, figuring I could squeeze in a few hours, and then my daughter duties would be done. I had envisioned this being quite the adventure–namely, my mom and I both holding up items and laughing about why we kept such trivial things. My mom and I are very much alike, in that we do not always show the best judgment in throwing things away. My husband would say I’m a pack rat. I like to think I’m sentimental.

When I got there, my mom was already downstairs. She had a trash pile, a keep pile, and the “must be gone through” pile. Needless to say, the trash pile was the smallest of the three.

There were ice skates and tennis rackets that I had never seen, and loads of coloring books and kids’ puzzles that I had forgotten about. There was also my Sesame Street dollhouse and my Fisher Price zoo… and the Barbie hot dog stand!

But then my mom pointed to several piles of books and envelopes and pictures, all stacked precariously on top of the ping pong table.

The first pictures were fun—they were mostly my parents when they were dating and shortly after they had gotten married. I recognized the tacky yellow and orange linoleum we had in the kitchen at our old house, the rocking chair we had in the living room, and a clock we had on our wall.

But then things got interesting. At the base of the pile was a scrapbook. The scrapbook was my grandma’s, and it was the kind of scrapbook that doesn’t really exist anymore. There were movie tickets glued in haphazardly, stickers attached to the pages, and Valentine’s Day cards that my grandma had traded with her sister, brother, and their cousins. As I turned the pages, I could see a clear progression of my grandma’s youth and then adolescence. There were postcards from the man my grandma would eventually marry, my grandfather, sent during World War II.

I was ecstatic to find these, and I’m pretty sure I let out a little squeal of glee. I had never met my grandfather; he died before my parents were even married. But I had heard the stories of him fighting in the army during World War II and his eventual capture and placement in a prisoner of war camp.

At this point, all hope of getting through the items in the rest of the basement had gone out the window.

This was evidence of my grandma living an entirely different life other than the life I had known her in. Grandma, who got her hair done every Thursday afternoon, who swore by her cold cream and satin pillowcase, who always let me win at Rummy. This was proof that she’d had crushes and friends and a first love and gone to movies and dances.

I carefully closed the brittle album and placed it back on the table, eager to pick up the next pile. It was like going backwards in a weird time warp succession. I flipped through the pictures. There were many photos, all in black and white, of people I don’t recognize. My mom was able to point out some of the people, some distant relatives. But there were several pictures that looked like they had been ripped from a scrapbook. They had no name, no date, not even a description written on the back. A sinking feeling washed over me as I realized we might never know who is in these pictures. There were pictures of houses with flowers blooming in the front, pictures of children standing on the lawn, and pictures of people posing in front of the same house. This was evidence that someone had loved their home enough to take pictures of it.

One album was dedicated almost entirely to animals–dogs, a litter of puppies, a deer running across the yard, and cows. In one of the photos, the cows’ names were printed clearly next to the picture: Blackie, Gertrude, and Rosie. It’s safe to say I get my love of animals honestly.

There were World War II ration stamps and the paperwork that belonged to a garage my Great-Great Aunt Boots and her husband owned. There were copies of Army discharge papers dating back to the 1800’s, there were old greeting cards and letters. One letter in particular was to my grandma from her sister, and the letter said that the reason it was on hospital letterhead was because she was writing the letter while she was at work. I chuckled at this.

At first the treasure trove of pictures and papers and cards was fascinating. And it still is. But then it became slightly heartbreaking. The pictures of women in long dresses and the man in the Model T car are of distant relatives, surely, but we will never know how this person is related to us or what they were like, because anyone who would have known those answers is now also gone.

We learned about World War II in school, but I will now never hear a first-person account of what it was like to have to ration food or gas, or what my grandma felt when receiving postcards from her future husband.

At one point every person in these pictures had lived everyday lives, just like me–they went to work, they budgeted their money, they bought groceries, they worried about school assignments and grades and whether or not their crush liked them back.

Years ago, I remember sitting with my grandma as she went through some pictures. I was probably sixteen, having just gotten my license and using my newfound freedom to go visit my grandma, as I often did. For some reason, on this particular day, she had a box of photos out and was telling me who the people in each picture were and what was happening. I remember asking her questions. Why didn’t I think to write these answers down? As a lifelong writer, why didn’t I think to take notes about my family history?

I’m sure the answer is because I was young. When we are young, we think we are invincible. The idea that we don’t actually have all the time in the world to accomplish our goals and spend time with our family and loved ones does not even occur to us.

I closed these photo albums a little more carefully and placed the pictures back in the envelope a little more gently this time. Grandma had kept these pictures, and now it is my mother’s and my duty to keep them as well.

I am actually looking forward to the next session of cleaning out my parents’ basement.