Greed

...I really hope you've read the Little House series, this might not make much sense otherwise...

It is sort of ridiculous how often I think of Ma from the Little House on the Prairie books. Crows may have devoured the family's crops; her oldest daughter may have gone blind; her well-intentioned, but somewhat failure of a husband may have dragged her around hell's half acre on the futile quest for the American dream; but never, never did she crack. No matter what happened, there she'd be, smiling her gentle smile, and turning those crows into delicious pies so the family could enjoy the silver linings in life. That was her role, really, silver lining creator. Things were always going wrong for that family. Her life must have been hell. Just getting through the prairie summers without air-conditioning or deodorant would have been quite the trial. And in the winter she always seemed to be preparing bean dinners. In a two-room log cabin, that could NOT have been pretty. But never, never was there a scene like:

Laura woke up. There was a commotion from Ma and Pa's bedroom. "You're such a pig, Charles," Ma shouted, "can't you go outside and do that?"

I think about Pa too, but not as much. Mostly, I think about him in the scenes from The Long Winter, where the family was stuck inside one room twisting hay to stay warm and surviving off a bag of wheat because the snow had cut them off from the supply train. Pa got them through it all with his plucky blend of good humour and tenacity, things none of us is blessed with in this house. How would we survive a winter huddled in front of a hay fire and eating nothing but wheat? Honestly, I don't think we would. The whole-wheat farts would break our spirit by mid-December; by January one of us would be dead. High Intensity, if writing a memoir of the ordeal, would not mince words in describing how insufferable me and Mr. IQ had been through it all. Mom was particularly miserable, she would write, always whining about how much she missed coffee. As for dad, well, when mom started complaining about how twisting hay was making her hands cold and threatening to burn his books to stay warm, he got out the butcher knife. That was the end of her...

I am NOT someone who idealizes the past. I think, at least for us lucky westerners, the world IS getting better. Uncle Tom isn't out slaving in my cotton fields making me rich. I'm not tying my corsets so tight my intestines are popping out to say hi. Every third child of mine will not die of small pox. Etc., etc., blah blah. When students in my classes say "Oh, the world is getting so much worse," I always pounce on them. Their argument usually ends (lamely) with, "Well, people swear a lot more now." Well. So they do. Big F**n deal.

Having said all that, something has obviously gone a little wrong. We're pretty spoiled. Today's Globe and Mail said that 11 million Americans have rented storage spaces to hold their excess stuff. What? What? WHAT? That is so gross. Ma and Pa would be appalled. It MUST be the source of at least some of the discontent in this part of the world, all this owing stuff. I mean, nothing is more miserable than a kid who has been given everything, as a teacher I can confirm that in spades. Why would it be different for big people?

So.

Mr. IQ's dad is NOT coming into town this weekend after all. He has a hernia, and cannot lift things, so the big purge is not going to happen. It's a two-man job, and we have no friends I felt comfortable enough to ask help sift through everything we have in the basement, even if very little of it is mine. It's too embarrassing. I was so upset that the clean-up wasn't going to happen, oh, was I upset, but then comfort has come to me in the form of that article I read this morning. Yay! Another epiphany! (Any more and I'll probably keel over from all these lightening bolt flashes.) It's pretty obvious the hernia has saved us from doing something that I KNEW was ridiculous, but now realize is also, well, sick. Phew. I am 99% relieved. 95% relieved. OK, if I can't be honest with you I am living a life of deception, so I'll tell you the truth, and say I'm at least 80% thankful. No storage spaces. It's just got to go. Period.

I have a plan, and it's going to work. I'll spare you the details. I'm about as sick of all this as you are.