Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 6, 1995 TAG: 9502080011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
AT LUNCH the other week (we were seven women), one of the youngest among us revealed that she plans, as soon as the weather is warmer, to shave her head.
She's strikingly pretty, possessed of a serene self-confidence, and I told her that I thought she could successfully carry off such a dramatic look.
``But that's not why I'm doing it,'' she explained. ``I'm doing it because I want to get rid of everything.''
She had, she said, already emptied her room of all her possessions; shaving her head was her next step.
Now, ours was a brief and merely cursory conversation in the middle of a noisy restaurant. A comprehensive answer to the question ``Why?'' would have been impossible, there or then. So it would be presumptuous of me, here and now, to pretend that I fully understand her actions.
But I have often shared her impulse: the desire to clean out, hone down, streamline, clarify. The desire to strip to the bare bones of soul.
Indeed, as the chat went around the table, it was revealed that all of us had shared, did share her impulse. That, in fact, ``cleaning out our rooms'' was chief among our common, current desires.
I've been pondering this; wondering why, though we all professed to want to clear our rooms, only one of us had actually summoned the steely determination needed to carry through?
In college, I knew a girl who'd stripped her room. It was as elegantly bare as a nun's cell. I could never visit it without a terrible curiosity concerning where she kept her textbooks and class notes, her family pictures and the amazing collection of hats she owned, as evidenced in her daily dress.
Similar fripperies and possessions have continued to bollox me, since then, whenever I've longed to clear my room. Immediately I start wondering: What about my baby pictures? What about my books? What about the crayon drawings the children have made for me, and my great-grandfather's writing desk? If one is truly to clear the slate, mustn't everything go?
In the middle of that noisy restaurant, I asked my young friend, ``Have you come to miss anything you've relinquished?'' No, she told me calmly. But it had been hard.
Very hard.
After stewing on this for the ensuing weeks, I think I must admit that, for me at least, it would be impossible.
Oh, there's plenty in my life that I would gladly part with. The catalogues that keep piling up, for instance. The 7,000 fruitcake tins stored in the barn, the crocheted toilet paper cover, the broken TV sets and toaster ovens, the gold plastic wall ornaments we were given as wedding presents.
It would be possible, even laudatory, to part with these things.
But I wouldn't want to part with every thing in my room. I am my past, and that past includes a great many objects I hold dear. My best doll, the little pewter rooster my sister gave me when we were in college, last year's anniversary card from my husband, my sleek black fountain pen.
I admire my young friend's resolve. And I thank her for showing me dedication to principles that she holds dear. I hope she'll never miss a single thing she cleared out from under her bed.
But the bones of our souls show, too, in what we choose to keep. And so I thank her, as well, for pushing me to this self understanding. While her room stands elegantly bare, mine will always be cluttered with postcards and bird's nests, the three shawls I wear most often, piles of books, maps, my great-grandparents' love letters, puppets, rocks, feathers, and the long grey hairs I daily shed.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB