CLEANING THE ATTIC

Scraps from every quilt I’ve made, linoleum blocks, pillows that don’t match anything but each other which someday I’ll recover. Tight ice skates, mildewed ski boots, The winter sleeping bag that he promised would keep me warm.

The print of a scarecrow in a brown coat that hung above the piano till I couldn’t stand it any more even though my father made the frame. Mother’s Marine Corps scrapbook. Textbooks from before the Flood arguing the case for Continental Drift, books filled with proofs for the goodness of God.

Bone china cups and saucers wrapped in paper and piled in a pail. Two soup tureens, a dye pot, a spinning wheel, dishes I saved for the kids who bought better ones. Bearfeet slippers with no soles, high school notes and sweatshirts, a blue stuffed animal of unknown species. A model of the plant Hoth built of styrofoam and blue rubber gloves.

A broken plastic fireman’s hat. Cowboy guns. Campfire girl beads, a wedding gown, an opera costume, a Canadian flight suit, a green wig, a paper skeleton, my father-in-law’s last bathrobe.

Tante Lillian’s missals and the portrait of Jesus’ Sacred Heart I forgot to put into her coffin. A Jerry Garcia clock. A broken lamp given me as a parting gift by a terrible boss.