If you ever receive a birthday or Christmas card from me, please, read it, check it for money (good luck with that), and feel free to toss it. The gesture will have come, done its job, and gone!
Simple, right? Should be the policy for the receiving of all greeting cards. Right?
No, not right at all.
No, in terms of the giving and receiving of greeting cards, such simplicity escapes us.
I understand that a person feels guilty throwing a card from a good friend or your mother out in the trash. It’s anathema! It’s somehow built into our DNA to stuff these cards into a drawer in the bedroom. And the longer we keep them, the worse it gets.
I myself, who am not so much cold as frequently oblivious to the fragile and familiar politics of human relations, have brief second thoughts too when I am cleaning out my drawers. What’s this? Aww. The card my wife gave me on our 9th anniversary. With love. But. Okay, if it was a 10th anniversary or a 25th anniversary. But it’s a 9th. I look over my shoulder. I step out into the hall and look both ways. I look at the card. I’d keep it, but … but if I do, where am I going to put my jujubes, my hammer, my Sobeys receipts and even splits?
Does she have my 9th anniversary card?
It’s hard to tell. The line between her sense of sentimentality and practicality is much like the horizon line between the ocean and the sky. Sometimes obvious, sometimes a seamless illusion.
I stick it in the shredder. I press the button. And when the card is halfway through, I remember, bleakly, starkly, our policy.
Our card policy is the ‘keep everything’ policy.
Every time I open a tote hoping to find a pair of winter pants or a pair of sandals and I find birthday cards instead, I go through multiple signs of the cross, because it’s almost more than I can do to keep from showering the place with blasphemies. They boil over. I tried stifling them but it’s bad for my health. They won’t be repressed. They come either freely or hissing as though from an over-stuffed suitcase somebody is sitting on in an effort to close. Still, if I put one card in the trash, a voice fills the room, much like the voice that used to tell me to close the fridge door. A ubiquitous voice. “Don’t touch those! I am sorting those out! God Almighty! My nerves!”
C’mon. You can’t save everything.
Even the Stanley Cup has only so much room. You can’t just keep putting more rings on the Cup. You can’t skate around the rink with a twelve-foot-high trophy. Every so often they take a ring off. The next ring is due to come off in 2030, and with it the Leafs. Yep. Policy is policy. Even the Leafs will not be saved by sentimental drivel. After 2030, they’re gone. And … well … don’t get me started.
Anyway, my point is, I’m trying to find places to put stuff lately. We just had family move in and even shoebox-sized spaces are at a premium. We did get a new shed for this occasion, but I don’t want to put household stuff in the shed. It’s a tool shed! The old shed got out of hand and this is, yes, a brand-new start. A chance to do it right this time.
Actually, it’s an opportunity to bring some of my stuff from my old shed into this one. But not just any old stuff.
Take, for instance, this old hinge. Sure, it’s thirty-six years old. Maybe it’s got a bit of rust. But…
It could come in handy someday.
Not like a used birthday card.
Mike Finigan, from Glace Bay, is a freelance writer now living in Sydney River. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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