My wife and I moved a short while back from our crowded and lair-like house outside Boston to an abruptly more open and airy place in Amherst. Over a month in, I’m still gaping at new space and different light. The move came after thirty years in the house that most of our lives had happened in, the house about which I said for close to thirty years to anyone who would listen, “You’re going to have to bury me out back by the hollowed-out apple tree trunk.” And I meant it.
How I (we) got from that primal allegiance to ordering boxes from Home Depot is a narrative I won’t try to unspool. Suffice it to say, the boxes arrived in bundles of ten, so many that we admitted we had over-bought, an admission we retracted few weeks later when we had to repeat the order.
I found that going through my accumulations became an ongoing encounter with everyone I’ve been on the way to whoever I am now.
Books were obviously the most powerful triggers, and I could fill many pages just itemizing my hours of vetting. There was no way I could just stack them by the handful into the boxes. The process for me was akin to updating an old address book, a kind of time-travel. The Alexandria Quartet (keep, maybe…), The Sportswriter (am I really going to read about Frank Bascombe again?), The Wings of the Dove (there may yet come a day…) and so on. If one were to follow that stream-of-consciousness until all the books were packed, the diary of my inner life—which is to say—my reading life, would be on open display.
Then there were all those things, objects saved through the years. The “keep or take” dilemma for those was usually fairly straightforward. The decisions were made along the lines of usefulness and sentiment. Much calling across the room. “What about this?” “Are you kidding? My sister gave me that—I want it!” Between the two of us most of the “stuff” got sorted and was either saved or set aside for the big Goodwill truck parked out behind the Stop & Shop.
But now I ask, for I still wonder, what about everything else? What about all the things in between? Things not necessarily useful but also not saturated with association. The Latvian ornament someone gave my parents who then passed it to me; the watches and glasses I will never wear again; that small piece of the Berlin Wall, alongside with a chip of granite taken from Joyce’s Martello tower in Dublin; a small, glazed ceramic head my daughter made; that silver flask my wife gave my father for his birthday…
Asked, I will claim a love of spareness. I privately invoke Tolstoy’s story “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” and affirm the answer: six feet. So then what are all those boxes doing there, Mr. Kane? If I never opened those boxes again, just left them piled up there through the seasons, I would probably forget them entirely. So why not the dumpster?
This, I guess, brings the real question. Why, if not out of nostalgia or utility, does one keep something? Why can’t I toss that old wooden knife sharpener shaped like a rooster? My album of Paul Butterfield’s East-West, which will never revolve on a turntable again?
The answer is, I think, shockingly simple. I keep these things because I have gone through time with them. They have been in my field of vision for decades, many of them. The Butterfield album was there with me in room after room of my growing up. The objects I keep are not necessarily connected to special occasions and mark no anecdotally special moments. They belong to the special class of nouns: they were the things that were with me, part of my surroundings as year after year I moved through my ordinary day.
These familiar things, no matter how useless, hold the mark of our nearness to them. An object seen daily for thirty years is one I have gradually irradiated with my idle glances, or, vice versa, that has molecule by molecule imprinted itself on me, staked its mysterious claim. All these recognitions belong to the profound retrospective that is packing-up. They determine for me letting go and also preview what might yet happen. I have little doubt that they also stand in for larger and deeper assessments still to come.
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Sven Birkerts is the author, most recently, of Speak, Memory, a meditation on Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir. He co-edits the journal AGNI, and has, as you will see, moved to a new town.
24 comments
Sandra Eliason says:
Sep 13, 2021
Sven, you spoke to the narrative I’ve been creating in my head, the difficulty I have as I’m sorting and trying to let go. Over 3 years it has gone, piece by piece, bag by bag, box by box to the appropriate place. But with such great difficulty! You’re right, it’s watching pieces of my life disappear.
Jane Marcellus says:
Sep 15, 2021
Yes! This brings to mind what I felt as I cleared out the house my parents bought when I was 12. My parents and I lived there together for a few years, then it was my mother and me, then for three more decades, it was just my mother alone. You ask, “What about all the things in between?” So much of life is that.
Clover Earl says:
Sep 15, 2021
Thanks so much for finding and sharing the words that articulate the experience I have had repeatedly over the last few decades. I have moved many times from MN to CA to OR to the SW, and back to MN. I shudder to think how many things have travelled with me for the entirety of my journey. At 61 years of age, I know the time has come to let much of it go…and still I struggle to get started.
Mary ann O'gorman says:
Sep 16, 2021
The crux, the objects “I have gradually irradiated,” is all for me.
Beautiful piece.
Ruth W. Crocker says:
Sep 16, 2021
Thank you, Sven. I appreciate your words and your knowledge of “things.”
sven birkerts says:
Sep 16, 2021
Hi Ruth! And many thanks and good thoughts out in your direction—
Marian Kilcoyne says:
Sep 16, 2021
I loved this piece. Brought back memories of moving out. Bittersweet.
Winona Wendth says:
Sep 18, 2021
This works nicely with Sara Majka’s “The Comfort of Objects,” her short essay on Natasha’s carpets in “Tolstoy Together.” This is the time of year and the time of Life when we wonder what all our stuff means. Thank you for this . . . Well-timed.
Bob Shea says:
Sep 20, 2021
Thanks for this, Sven. The parallels to where my wife and I are now make this an especially affirming essay. And I know for sure now that I’m older than you but far from wiser. The tell? Your Paul Butterfield album reference of your youth. Hah! I produced two concerts with Butter in my youth Still have the first BBBlues Band vinyl. One post-concert almost came to blows. But that’s another story, eh? Best to you in your new lair.
sven birkerts says:
Sep 22, 2021
One day you’ll tell me that story…Thanks, Bob.
Valerie Andrews says:
Sep 22, 2021
Hi Sven. We’d like to republish this in our literary journal about the cultural life of home. http://Www.reinventinghome.org
This is a wonderful description of memory lodged in objects. As one who has moved 33 times(including to and from the Amherst area) I know it well! Packing is a liturgy — and moving is an act of faith!
sven birkerts says:
Sep 22, 2021
Thanks—-I’m fine with you republishing this—–will check out your site—-
John Wagner says:
Sep 24, 2021
Beautiful story. It really captures the process of moving on and the need to move or not move things with you. I dread the day I’ll have to do this.
Sunnymay says:
Oct 2, 2021
Objects hold memories by association within our surroundings. The attachments made over time and significance we’ve arbitrarily assign to them allows them to stay or go. Moving seems to change the status and is the impetus for rethinking all of our belongings.
Sven burkertdy says:
Oct 3, 2021
Just so——-the uprooting gives them new context and new life.
Heidi Jean Sewall says:
Oct 18, 2021
This essay describes my experience (the boxes! who knew I needed so many!) I’ve been downsizing since my divorce in 2010, which has involved 5 moves. And I still need boxes. Thank you for this story!
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Oct 21, 2021
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Andria Wendell says:
Oct 25, 2021
“I found that going through my accumulations became an ongoing encounter with everyone I’ve been on the way to whoever I am now.” What a stunning line of prose.
lee montgomery says:
Oct 26, 2021
Lovely…”…that has molecule by molecule imprinted itself on me, staked its mysterious claim.”
We are contemplating the same move, and I wander among these things and think how strange we collected them, how weird to think about letting go.
How’s Amherst?
Susan says:
Jan 10, 2022
Boxes of stuff, packed away under beds, squashed into cupboards, hidden in wardrobes never see the light of day. I’ve moved the boxes – unopened – from place to place, so really they no longer have associations for me. I can only think that I’m saving all these objects from destruction. If I know someone can use that horrible sweater I never wear, I’m OK giving it away, but giving up that beautiful lamp which doesn’t actually work means condemning it to the landfill, the crushing machine or the fire. It doesn’t deserve that. So, like it or not, I’m on a mission…
Shivani says:
Jul 11, 2022
Beautifully written. I have felt all of these emotions for ‘my things’, which are not useful- but are a part of one’s extended identity and how do you call a house – your ‘home’ without them. Because adding up every moment of your life with ‘things-now-redundant’ from beginning is what led you here, at this point – are equally your part of your life! Thank you for writing this.
Nicola says:
Aug 26, 2022
Once upon a time I sold my boombox and toaster in a carboot sale in a Yorkshire field and moved to America. But they are my things, mine. Someone else has been listening through my speakers all these years and toasting my bread for breakfast. Someone else! Everything we’ve owned holds our impression, that day in our life when we said “This, today!” or “That!” From that moment on, part of the inventory that is us. We don’t need those things…but…our fingerprints are on them, our breath. (Give it back, we whisper, that breath, and all the done days– give them baaack!)
Belle Ree says:
Nov 1, 2022
“I keep these things because I have gone through time with them.”
That detailed glimpse of past events when you take hold of that certain gift or item. It’s not about whether it’s still useful or not, but it’s about the memories they hold in them, that I can’t throw stuff away, at least for me.
I still have the piece of paper when my I wrote my first article for our student publication way back in high school– it got rejected.
In my box of stuff still lies that worn out bracelet I had during college, dusted and ripped by time. I can still remember the local music events I attended with it.
These things, they have our prints in them.
Katie Marya says:
Jan 23, 2024
Sven-I am teaching this and your more recent feature in Brevity in my Intro. to CNF class. Trying to show them they can do many things with the same subjects.