Today marks the beginning of a project I've been anticipating nearly my whole life. Related to my one word of the year (reclaim). Similar to Raina's situation that I read about a few years ago via an Apartment Therapy post. Someone who knows the avalanche of stuff that I'm up against. Someone who managed to get through it all and document it. Someone who's so adorable that she even makes an overwhelming mess look cute.

Behind the scenes, I've been working hard over the past several summers to get rid of things: some furniture, an air conditioner, printer, paper shredder, VHS tapes, wine glasses, backpack, board games, bags of clothes, mirror, charcoal grill, dishes. I need to take charge of my own stuff if I'm going to have anything to say about anyone else. Just this month, I tackled one of the biggest and smallest items: I sold my car, and processed (err, looked at and tore up) all the receipts my mom had accumulated in 2003.

It's not money I'm after; it's being free from the burden of stuff. Some things I simply give away. Other things I sell because I'm driven to have something to show for it all. Like my own little redemption center, I suppose I do want my 5 cents back, but I want this much more:

"In Guelph, Ontario.... Each artist is given a mound of junk and commissioned to make from it beauty. The created works are then showcased along the very river from which the raw materials have come. God does that. He works all things together for good for those who love him and are called to his purposes. He takes junk and sculpts art."
- Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God

Interestingly, that place is only 55 miles from my grandmother's (former) home, from which most of this stuff originally came. Looking at the map, the aforementioned river must be the Speed, which eventually flows into Lake Erie, which flows into the Niagara. A tiny offshoot of the Niagara, Fish Creek, flowed gently behind my grandmother's house before joining up merely 500 feet later with the Niagara River and becoming the raging rapids that go over the falls. As a child, I was warned not to play in that creek because even in its shallow water, I could get swept up and carried away downstream, left to plummet over Niagara Falls to my death, like the neighbor's son....

This dramatic backdrop is imprinted on my heart; it's my mother's family homeland. But it's all of our homeland, really. It's where trash becomes treasure, where death becomes life, where the current carries us safely to a place of beauty, of re-creation. Of reclaiming  our inheritance.

My hope is that, little by little, I can save enough from this project to buy our family 4 plane tickets either to Florida, or probably more appropriately, to my mother's hometown. So that we can draw some fresh life from this ghost-stuff, and create some (hopefully) happy family memories together, while there's still time!

For starters, we've got gas to the airport covered: $20 from selling (another) backpack today :)