When did I become my mom?

I wrote this MANY weeks ago, then thought I lost it because I didn't save or post it...just found it again, reread it and still think I want to share it....

I noticed it the other day...I mean really noticed it. Before now I have occasionally heard my mother's voice come out of my mouth as I unintentionally repeated one of her favorite phrases, "because I said so."or "that's no way to speak to me."

But the other day, I realized I now not only sound like her, I also live like her. Inhabiting the corners of my bedroom are brown paper bags filled with the minutia of my life....the unopened mail, the socks that need matches, the envelopes of pictures that need to be put in photo album, school work that needs to filed or shredded.

When I was growing up I lived in rooms with bags in the corners, which then became bags that moved down the basement stairs to take up residence on the pingpong table or the old kitchen table. There really is a method to my mom's storage....it isn't alphabetic....it's more universal than that. She stores things chronologically, things that came into her possession at similar times are stored together. When she needs to find something, she simply remembers what else was happening at that time and looks for those things to be together.

I really thought I had beat the odds, that I had managed to get a better handle on that stuff. Then Friday Emily asked if a friend could spend the night with us on Saturday. It was while I was straightening the house somewhat I realized something very disturbing.

In one corner of the library I have a stack of developed photos in their little envelopes easily 18 inches high, waiting ever so politely to make it into photo albums. On the other side of the room is a pair of brown paper bags which contain the contents of my desk from a couple of months ago. The pile on the desk got so tall I slid it all off together to deal with later, and there it still sits....

I am sure somewhere in those bags is something I will miss the moment I get rid of them so I can't just throw them away. This was proven to me a couple of months ago when Bruce was working in the attic putting down a floor so we wouldn't have to keep walking on the joists and just balancing the boxes of Christmas decorations across them.

Anyway, during the course of working up there, he sent down a couple of boxes for me to go through. Amongst the owner's manuals for computers that needed 5.25 inch floppy disks and junk mail from 1998 (and before!!! what did I do? just move these boxes en masse from the old house??!!), I found some rather important documents and letters. Things that I really needed to keep.

So, while I have only just recognized that I am using my mother's paperbag storage system, it has obviously been part of my adult life for some time.

So, note to self....time to start going through those bags. Mostly because I don't have a basement that I can fill up!