KEEPING THE 'THROWABLES'

KEEPING THE THROWABLES

I was awakened by the ringing of my cell phone, disturbing my very pleasant dream that I was never able to recall afterwards. I felt very tired with muscles aching all over that I almost was not able to do my routine morning sit-up exercise.

Suddenly I realized it is almost three weeks now that I am sorting out things from boxes and bags of all sizes and colors containing supposedly ‘throwable’ materials.

‘Throwables” refer to things we want to discard but cannot do so because of different values attached to them, These ‘throwables’ were from my daughters’ dwelling places who cannot find ways to deal with them so they found it easier to send them to our old provincial home where I should be enjoying my retirement (sigh!)

In line with my positive conversion theory, I am trying to convert ‘throwables’ which have a very strong negative connotation, to ‘keepables’ so I am sorting them to the right boxes to be worth keeping. Some of them are really almost worthless now but for sentimental reasons should be cherished a few more years. Some are bought so expensively that discarding them now is almost a kind of sin. You don’t just give them to charities as they also find it difficult to whom to distribute those things which after all were not what the fire and flood victims really needed.

So no matter how crowded the provincial home turned into, I still try to keep those ‘throwables’, aware though that every rainy season I’ll have to keep repacking them into new boxes to be replaced in another cabinet.

Sometimes I am entertaining the idea that probably during one of my previous existences I was one time a museum curator or possibly an anthropologist. I just find it so difficult to discard valuables. Exactly the opposite of my wife who uses a thing once or twice then completely forget all about them including those little gifts that I gave her directly from my heart.

I remember my very first gift to her after we married was a black jewelry box with a dancing ballerina inside. I never remember her putting her jewelries there but instead when we have our first child she used the jewelry box as a toy because of the dancing ballerina. So the boy removed the arms of the ballerina but it was still dancing. I showed it to my grand daughter when they had a vacation here last December. The little girl was so amused when I explained to her that it was her dad’s first toy 37 years ago.

I hope when I die they don’t just throw away my ‘throwables’. There are many hidden treasures there.