When I retired after my long career as a librarian, I embarked on a new venture – helping people declutter and organize their stuff! (See Second Career – Home Organizer!)
I advertised my organizing services and I started getting calls from folks who said they needed help getting a handle on their paperwork; or their closets and drawers were a mess; or they were drowning in clutter; or were simply overwhelmed by too much stuff.
Those who I suspected were hoarders I referred to colleagues who had specialized training. Hoarding is a serious problem and in fact has been identified as a mental health condition.
But I was eager to help the garden variety clutterers, and I soon learned when folks let you into their homes and you earn their trust, they often share their secrets and their guilty pleasures. One client showed me where she kept her mother’s ashes, and an elderly woman I was helping pack for her move to an assisted living residence showed me her trove of love letters. They were from an old beau she had known 60 years ago, and she invited me to sit and listen as she lovingly read them aloud.
And then there was the guy whose studio apartment I was helping declutter who showed me where he kept a secret stash of his own.
Once years ago I heard that a lecture on transcendental meditation was to be given at a local community center.
Intrigued and eager to learn about the benefits of meditation I went, and when the lecture ended I struck up a conversation with the young woman sitting next to me. Her name was Joan, we were about the same age, and like me she was recently married.
Happily we exchanged phone numbers and a few days later Joan called and invited me and Danny to dinner.
On the appointed evening we arrived armed with the requisite bottle of wine, met her charming husband Arnie, and we were soon gayly chatting away when Joan popped out of the kitchen to say dinner would be ready in 15 or 20 minutes.
While we were waiting, she suggested that Arnie show us the pictures they’d taken on their honeymoon. And so he brought out a large photo album, and began proudly turning the pages.
I don’t remember where they had honeymooned, or what Joan served us for dinner that night, or if we ever saw them again. But I’ll never forget that photo album with dozens and dozens of pictures of Joan and Arnie in various poses – all smiles, and both of them completely in the nude.
(BTW I never could get into transcendental meditation either.)
We felt a bit deceived—after all, we only agreed to take him because she had begged—but he had clearly had a traumatic adolescence and changed since his owner had died. We still took him in, the damaged goods, and named him “Jack”. Read More
