A row of American Girl dolls across the top of the computer desk in the guest room.  A lone girl’s sandal on the floor of my closet.  And the question that nags me. “Should I take it to Goodwill (where its mate undoubtedly is)?  Or throw it away? Have they already thrown away its mate, at Goodwill?  Or is it lounging at the bottom of some sale bin, waiting for me to do the right thing and complete the pair again so some impoverished girl can have a nice pair of sandals for the summer?”

The girls have moved out, but their stuff remains, like flotsam left on the sand at high tide, when the water moves back out into the ocean.

I remember now with much more kindness my mother’s perpetual plaintive refrain, every time I came home when I was in my twenties. “Would you like to take the stuff in your closet back with you?”  I would take a cursory look at the bridesmaid’s dresses I would never wear again, the prairie wife’s outfit my mother made me for our town’s sesquicentennial celebration (which I would gladly wear again if there ever were another sesquicentennial) and other miscellaneous junk that I never thought about until she made me look at it. Inevitably, I would tell her, “No, just leave them in the closet for now, that’s fine.” I didn’t want that stuff.  But I didn’t want Mom to throw it out, either.

Looking at the boxes and boxes of craft supplies thrown randomly into the closet under the stairs, I think how strange it is, that physical objects that mean so little to us live on into the present and future, and the events that matter a hundred times more live on only as memories, as family stories trotted out and given air time when we all get together.

I can locate twenty years’ worth of Christmas presents, scattered around the house, forgotten unless my eye falls across them. But when I look back at those Christmases, I can’t remember who got what when.  I do remember the girls sitting together at the top of the stairs, waiting in breathless anticipation for permission to come downstairs and see the tree.

I remember the Christmas morning that my daughter Liz knocked over an entire glass of water on the living room carpet, and every time anyone stood up from the sofa all day long, they would forget about the wet spot and step directly into it, saturating their socks immediately, and everyone would laugh.

I remember the storm-filled teenage years, when Liz and her father (who have the best of relationships now, with infinite respect for each other) would lock horns during major holidays, and how my daughter Shannon and I finally figured out that it was best to just go into another room until it was over.  “It’s like a summer thunderstorm,” we learned to say.  “Once it’s over, it’s over, and the main thing to do is not get wet while it’s raining.”

I remember the handmade presents: the aprons the girls decorated for me, the clocks Liz made for her father, and the Beanie Baby houses the girls made for each other out of cardboard boxes, markers and massive amounts of scotch tape.

I remember endless trips to the mall. I remember taking each girl out on a Saturday, to help me shop for the other girl.  I remember treating them to lunch at Baker’s Square and having wonderful talks together until, fueled with full stomachs, pie and large doses of caffeine, we braved the crowd at the mall once again…

I remember being a grownup angel in the Christmas pageant while the girls got to be little angels. I remember singing Christmas carols, decorating the tree. Going to church together.  Finding moments to feel again the great truths of our religious faith at the heart of .

The memories are wonderful and have the added benefit of taking up no space.

Looking at the girl stuff still strewn throughout our house, I chuckle, remembering my father’s solution to the problem of “what to do with all the junk Luann left behind”.

My father rented a small U-Haul and when he came to our wedding, he dumped box after box of old journals, books and other disintegrating artifacts onto our living room carpet.  (Along with a hardwood rocking chair that he had refinished for us, as a wedding present.)

My husband swears to two things:  1) “If I’d known ahead of time about all that junk your father was going to bring I might never have married you,” and 2) “I will never ever, under any circumstances, rent a U-Haul and dump all my kid’s stuff on their living room carpet the way your folks did with you.”

So, given my husband’s vows, our house has become a minor museum, including everything from prom dresses to a couple of 100% cotton baby blankets buried at the bottom of the linen closet.

There’s no real harm in living in a museum.  Just as long as you don’t let the clutter from the past trip you up into thinking that your kids are still 8 and 10.   And as long as you remember that all that stuff is just that: stuff. Detritus washed up on the shores of the present from the waves of the past.

The trick is to keep the mind open.  To listen to what a 32-year-old daughter wants to talk about.  Though one may stumble still over that lone sandal, the mind must be kept in the present. Otherwise I won’t be open to experiencing those new special times that only  can be created in the now, those one-of-a-kind moments that I will want to add to the only collection worth keeping, those special family times that live on forever.  In our memories.