JUST WRITE!
Ghosts of Xmas past
By Tracey Coveart/The Scugog Standard

I had to retrieve something from my basement storage room the other day and the experience filled me with a kind of terror.

Not the kind of terror that gripped me when I made a trip to the cellar of the house in which I was raised. That fear was caused by the very real possibility that when I reached into a bag of potatoes a millipede about the length of my index finger would scuttle up my arm and send me into a full body/brain spasm. For some reason, our basement in Don Mills was a millipede paradise and it left me with emotional scars that will never heal.

Fast forward to my creative writing class at the University of Toronto when I glanced down at my shoulder and interrupted a student reading with a blood curdling scream. My professor (who disliked me intensely) believed the outburst to be malicious, and not until I had produced the body of the vile creature - legs still twitching furiously - was I permitted to rejoin my classmates at the table.

But it was not an acute attack of myriopodophobia that afflicted me in my basement this past weekend. Rather it was the fact that I could suddenly see myself on an episode of Hoarders, clutching a jar of my children’s toenail clippings and threatening disembowelment to anyone who tried to take it away from me.

Everything I’ve ever owned that hasn’t already been callously discarded by some well-meaning family purger is crammed into that storage room. And I have developed a sick sentimental attachment to every single thing down there.

Last fall, my eldest son and his friends helped me to clean out the garage.

We must have removed several hundred pounds of rocks I’d collected with the kids over a decade of summers in Nova Scotia. Rocks. And returning them to nature broke my heart. The fact that I allowed Matthew to chuck his mildewed Grade 12 art portfolio in the truck still overwhelms me with regret at regular intervals.

I can understand why I might not want to part with my old vinyl K-Tel greatest hits albums and the lopsided bowls I lovingly shaped on the wheel when I thought I might become a professional potter. What I can’t really fathom are the 30-odd tubs, bins and boxes of Christmas ornaments. There must be a special pathology that describes people who compulsively hoard seasonal stuff.

I’ve managed to cram my Halloween collection, complete with skull string lights and dozens of repackaged window cling cutouts, into three monstrous tubs. In their bowels are every costume my kids ever wore, every orange and black craft they ever made at school and every treat bag they ever carried door to door.

And the Easter stuff - including all the blown eggs we’ve ever dyed - takes up just one small metal shelf.

But it’s the Christmas decorations that have spun wildly out of control. I have individual bins of books, cards, singing stuffies, advent calendars, tree ornaments, outdoor garland and wreaths, strings of lights, snow globes, beautifully decorated miniature trees, bows and beads, hand-made angels and St. Nicks, kids’ crafts, an entire porcelain fishing village and Santa-themed kitchenware. My collection occupies at least twice the square footage of Stephie’s bedroom and I seem compelled to augment it each year.

My Christmas stash is worth an embarrassing amount of money (please, somebody make me an offer for the works and save me from myself). It has become so unwieldy that I dread unpacking it - and worse, packing it up again a few weeks later. I do it for Stephie, because she is Christmas crazy, but I no longer have the time, energy or strength to carry the bins up and down the stairs.

Last year I used the kitten as an excuse and didn’t even put up a Christmas tree. This year, only the Grinch can save me.