It's a Christmas Miracle!

My mother's guestroom

          The concept of moving into a new home and having to "fill it" with furnishings is completely foreign to me. This is because I am not only descended from a legacy of depression era-saving, but also from one of collecting.

          I recall visiting the home of a childhood friend and being stunned at the streamlined nature of not only her family’s living spaces but their closets. There were uniform white shelves, matching boxes for photos and miscellany, and that was about it. I recently visited another friend’s apartment in Manhattan, and while looking around at the decided dearth of knick knacks on the bookshelves and counters, I was forced to ask: “Where’s all your stuff?”

          This is because we are a family of savers and buyers. And this has most to do with a compulsive whirlwind I call Mom. Recently my mother assured me that, not to worry, she and Grandma had been saving me my own set of Christmas Lenox. She said it as though she had been assuaging one of my great fears, as if I had been spending years worrying: “How would Christmas truly be Christmas without serving my dinner parties on my very own holly-covered china?’ I was never asked whether I even liked the Christmas Lenox or whether I thought three sets, one for each generation was a bit in excess. The pieces were collected regardless.

          Why it should be the habit of Ukrainian peasant farmers to save every possible piece of value, I can only imagine, is because at one time they simply had nothing of value. Of course, this is a piece of the American dream that has gone awry. We have all of the habits of collecting, an inherited sense of entitlement after want, and in the case of many families, very few resources to house said collections. Or is it that, as suggested in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, having power over things like your finances allows you to symbolically buy pieces of your immortality? If you are able to pass things on, are you able to go on living? The other question is, are you able to actually continue living with all that shit?

          On the subject of resources, my parents’ newest one is time. My mother has always been a veritable tornado of energy, yes, but at one time she was running a business full-time and raising two kids and she was forced to do her shopping in the cracks of time that fell in between the balancing act. As a cousin of mine so aptly pointed out, now retired, my mother has not slowed her pace at all. She just has more time to shop in. Now, my mother has probably only stepped foot inside a mall once in the last thirty years. She is a thrifter, a consigner, an antiquer-boutiquer. The root of her aesthetic makes sense. As an educated, well-travelled woman, her goal in shopping is to find an item that is unique and interesting with a past or a personal story… and then to buy fourteen of them. “Less is more” was not a phrase I remember ever hearing as a child. No sooner did we gut and renovate our beach cottage, than my mother started filling it back up again with antique decoys and turn of the century clothing racks covered in embroidered hankies.

          Of course four walls cannot contain the generosity of my mother’s heart and so I reap the “benefits”. She has a habit of sending me the entire Sunday arts section of the Times piece by piece in the mail. (See also: plastic bags, photos, padded hangers, and Dove soap). My current apartment was essentially entirely furnished with basement finds before I had even signed the lease.

          I have told so many tales of my mother’s energized compulsion to shop and collect that recently, a friend looked at me very seriously and said “Katrina, is your mother a hoarder?” I assured my friend that my mother is not, in fact, saving 30 year old newspapers in piles. My parents’ things are all organized and stowed away. You will find everything labeled i.e., “Al’s summer polyester pantsuit, 1974”. We can walk easily in my parents’ home and even be ignorant of the basement and attic storage. You just have to move the decorative mannequin, whose outfit my mother changes seasonally, to set up the guest-bed, (no, seriously).

          I understand of course the absurdity that one of the biggest problems I have with my mother is that she is too generous. I would also be lying if I said I did not share my mother’s basic style. A few years ago I had to do a sweep of my childhood bedroom to remove some superfluous empty hatboxes, doilies and lace parasols but I do still look at the Yul Brynner commemorative plate my mother bought me with a fond joy as I pass my own dining room hutch. “You’re either going to love this or hate this,” she had said at the time. The answer was love. If you don’t believe me, you can come to my apartment. In the summer we dine on Japanese lusterware and in the winter apparently, Christmas Lenox.