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THE CELEBRATION OF CERTAIN BIRTHDAYS is long and drawn-out, just as the time it takes to get to a new decade. And thus I ate cake today. Blew out candles. Opened another gift or two. Decided that a decade birthday with extended celebration has its good points, although I'm mighty glad there isn't one to greet me around every corner.















This cake-eating was the culmination of a weekend birthday bash like none I've previously experienced. My children--rather than sending me off on a cruise or some other trip to get away from it all--rallied to help get it all away from me.

And that is precisely what I had told them earlier (no subtle hints) I wished for as a birthday gift. After years of excessive pack-ratting, and a triangular-shaped room at the top of our house that's much too accommodating, it was hugely appealing. "I want a cleaned-out attic!" I had said. "An eradication of stuff." (It sounded like some vile and spreading muck, the way I said it--"stuff".)

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And so, two days ago my children came to make a stab at it--this granting of my birthday wish. They weren't going to head into this (monumental) job without sustenance, so they first prepared a (monumental) birthday breakfast. After which they tromped upstairs to begin the dig down through the layers of artwork, stuffed animals, memorabilia, toys, family heirlooms, vintage clothing, Christmas decorations, Easter baskets--searching for all those items that were precious enough for at least one of the three to claim responsibility as the item's future caretaker.

Now if, dear reader, you haven't foreseen a potential problem in the scenario of three siblings rummaging around to lay claim to old stuffed animals...whoops, I mean family heirlooms, I can only assume you're an only child. I called a quick Summit Meeting on my Plan for Equity, which involved two simple steps and a roll of masking tape. "If you see anything you want, as long as it doesn't already belong to a sibling, stick it with a piece of tape and mark it with an X."

"What then?!" they all wished to know. "Why don't we just put our name on the tape?"










"Don't you want to get this stuff out of here?!

What if there's more than one X?! What then?"

Hmm. What then? Good question--precisely the one that tumbled in my brain at the moment. (My plan had a few kinks yet to be worked out.) Inside my head I said, "I'm bound to think of something." Outside, "I'll let you know!"

"Meanwhile," I said, "if there's no X, it goes downstairs."
And thus, the day wore on, the attic getting slowly more navigable, and the downstairs levels of the house getting much less so. It was a long and arduous process--this attempt to get it all away.
And no, we did not finish. There's lots more in the attic.

Aha, lot's more for me to tell another day, as well.


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