Letting Go: Loss and Elephant-Leg Pants... a Mom's Vision

“I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with all those books and papers from school, but, it wasn’t till today, that I knew I could throw them away,” my son Alex told his girlfriend and me. We stood last night, beers in hand, waiting for a table at Pequods where they are known for the “nation’s best pizza” (according to the server). Once we claimed a place at the bar, washed our hands and placed our orders, they both remarked they’d hit the wall.  Indeed, the two of them looked weary, not only from the lifting and toting from the storage unit to the dumpster, to Salvation Army and to each of our cars, but having arrived the afternoon before from Spain. Jet lag, I figured, got him a bit deeper into introspection.

Finances catalyzed the storage locker cleansing. Looking at over a hundred thousand dollars in graduate school loans and no forty-hour job, Alex needed to cut overhead. Every cubic foot we cleared made the climb from debt a little briefer… or at least he might be able to eat a little something between now and graduation in 2017.

We visited the storage unit to dig out before, but didn’t get very far. His revelation may have been one reason; my own inertia, maybe another.  Until yesterday, I’d aided in his accumulation of stuff.  Being the mom included a built in operator that makes me want to hold precious every-single-thing of his. We culled toys when they broke and clothes when his body out-sized them. Through five moves plus his going off to college, for the most part, I kept his things for him. When we moved, I’d pack everything in his room.  Boxes if partially or not unpacked, would be placed in the basement and moved again. I found a box yesterday marked, “Left on desk” from two moves ago and included items from high school. His college paraphernalia came home after graduation, but when he left for a studio apartment a year later and I moved to a place with no basement, again were packed and moved into the rental garage and he took on the cost.  Clearly, he found value in keeping papers, books, bags of pens, musical instruments, work out benches, photos, MVP plaques, stuffed animals, trucks, games, tools and electronics of all sorts.   

All through his wonder years, he surprised me when he was sentimental and just as easily surprised me at things he tossed. Yesterday, I had occasions to both encourage him to keep and toss items. Some Halloween he will thank me for pleading with him to keep the elephant-leg jeans from eighth grade… don’t you think? Or, the Alaska wide-suspenders.  I was most impressed that he emptied almost every folder of papers, handouts and receipts to reuse them. He said he didn’t have a graduate student supply cabinet as did the working students.

Of course we thought there might be value in some of the items. When a 14” blue M&M dispenser was tossed casually into the donate bin, I grabbed for my phone to Google its value. The first listing on eBay said $2000. And, the next twenty of the very same item ranged from $3.99-$7.99. Needless to say, it remained in the bin. I completely filled a 28” piece of luggage with books that ranged from grade school through college and got $6.00 for the entire collection from Half Price Books.

I watched how Alex and Jess interacted during this process. They’ve shared an apartment since last Spring and work hard to keep it organized. One option for reducing cubic footage included taking items to their home. I appreciated that there was no bickering and also a bunch of laughs as Alex made a case for keeping an item. Already, he’s learned sales techniques in business school.

While there are shows on TV about hoarders and Pinterest is crammed with pins of organizational tips and gadgets, it occurs to me that letting go is a developmental stage we all must transcend as a rite of adulthood. Letting go is inherently loss and few of us are ever ready for that.  When we are fortunate to have the choice to let someone or something go, it’s a character builder. If we are conscious of the effort and toll in letting go, it’s foundational for dealing with loss the next time in a healthy way. Letting go is never easy, but sometimes accepting the choice to let go frees up space, time and energy for new creation.

Observing Alex, I get a sense that at thirty years old, when adulthood is no longer theoretical, an emotionally intelligent person can assess who they are, what matters to them, and envision a version of their future. It is in that same space that a person can see the past and what they no longer need to carry into the future.  Being aware of what you stand for provides criteria for culling, elephant leg jeans excluded. That’s a mom’s vision.

p.s., The picture is a pen and watercolor done following our trip to the storage unit.

It Was Imagination I Know

Music to Accompany the Story...

It Was Fascination I Know 


Yesterday, still a block from the train station, I heard a distant announcement for the outbound train, alerting me to eight more minutes before my inbound ride... time enough to walk an extra neighborhood block. I crossed the tracks to the sidewalk falling two houses behind a boy with no calves, wearing a red backpack, a dark hoodie, board shorts, black socks and high tops. Probably hearing my foot steps, he turned around, peered at me, turned front and began to march. His arms swung and knees lifted.  Hup two three four, hup two three four.

His arm movement changed. His right hand caught a strap from his back pack, his left grabbed one on the other side, both arms and straps stretched taut. His step and arm movements became a wooden, marionette soldier. 

He turned around again. Apparently noticing that the distance between us had closed, he dropped the straps and ran two more houses. He vaguely stopped as he approached the corner at Hazel Street and walked into the intersection. A 10-foot hedge blocked my view of traffic. My breath caught as the boy leapt like a cat, straight up and landed facing into the street. His feet fell ninja-wide apart. He stretched his arms and again taut at his side. The hood of an blue-grey Pontiac rolled into view and halted a few feet in front of the boy.

The child stared down the driver while his hands, palms splayed forward, motioned to back down the car. It didn't move. The man behind the wheel took a swig from a travel mug. The boy spied me, narrowed his eyes at the car, jumped high to land once again facing the sidewalk and took off at a run. I lost sight of him a minute or so later when I climbed up the stairs to the platform.  

So creative... so oddly wonderful, I would love to have a peak into this boy's inner-life. I hope there is an adult who will nurture it.

Handsome Global Jetsetters

Watercolors have become an important part of my creative life. I continue to learn by doing, by taking classes and by emulating other artists. Today on a Sketchbook Skool posting I saw another student's watercolor that I admired. I decided to try her technique which included layers of color. Today, she posted www.MargaretMcCarthyHunt.com her 301st daily painting. I admire that too.

Here is my first painting which I like, and I used her technique. The male subject told me what to call the sketch, Hansome Global Jetsetters. 

Here is the sketch I did yesterday of the flowering cherry blossom tree across the driveway. I spent about ten minutes on it, had it shaped and the background sketched, when my neighbor pulled up in his truck and blocked my view. I stopped at that point, waved at him and said, f*it.

Though not in a obsessive compulsive way, I too have been painting and sketching daily. I have great faith and conviction that one day I will be able to see growth in my work. Right now, not so much.  I do feel more confident however, as I approach paper, pull out a brush and take my first strokes.


I am going to post a few I've done at Fort Sheridan over the last year. It's not really the most interesting scene, but I've gotten to know it in a way that allows me appreciate it and pay attention to how I render it. 

I would like to get to a more impressionistic style, but, I find myself wanting to realistically observe it. I am working to include other media and bought a couple pens. It's funny, when I start in pen, my watercolors feel sullied, like all I'm doing is coloring in a sketch.

I painted the next two on winter days. The top one was done on a snowy day in January. The temp must have been close to 32 degrees, so not blistery, just wet. The problem wasn't that the paints froze, it was that the snow fell so fast and furious,  that it melted as it hit the pigment, pooled and diluted the paints. I couldn't keep a consistent color.

I liked painting in the winter and though, I don't want it to hurry back, it gave me a new view and appreciation of my scene. There are few things that I have so deliberately looked at so many times. This is a zen sort of exercise. 

The sky is so blue and the lake is bluer in the next one. Fall 2014 turned the grasses brown and swept away most of the leaves. 

Everytime I go out, part of the pleasure is seeing what color the Lake and sky will be. During the summer when there are leaves, I can't see the Lake as I turn the corner into the parking lot but once the trees are bare, I come around the corner and it's like seeing an old friend and I am refreshed immediately.