My Dr has me on a 2 weeks medical leave from work due to my recent surgery.  He has me on bed rest.  I think this is a little excessive.   After my first surgery I was also under Drs orders to take 2 weeks off to recoup.  By the second week I was getting cabin fever.   I decided to sneak out to the mall.   I was suppose to be at home resting. I jumped when my phone rang.  I looked down and saw Bruce’s number light up.  Oh, Nuts!  If I had answered it he would have heard the mall music in the background and all the people milling around me.  So I screened his call and let it go to voice mail.  I felt incredibly guilty.  When I called him back,  I confessed immediately.  He did not have to interrogate me very long.  The huge, blazing hot interrogation lights were not needed.  He asked me what I was doing and I sang like a canary.  “I was at the mall!”  “Margaret, I knew I should not have gone to work today.  You’re suppose to take it easy and stay home.”  The lecture was more painful than the confession.

It’s the weekend and Bruce has projects in the works.  Today we are getting a new mattress delivered to the house for Scottie.  He is still sleeping on his original boyhood mattress.  It’s small and needs to be replaced.  I was not ready for a weekend project and am under Drs orders to stay home so I was not able to go get new bedding for his new bed.  Bruce and Scottie are taking care of the details.  This makes me nervous.

Last night I heard Bruce telling Scottie that he needed to clean off his headboard, which is also a bookshelf, and take the bed apart so they could carry it down the stairs.  Shock!!!  That is what was in Scottie’s eyes.  All of his boyhood treasures are crammed onto that bookshelf.  Things that to the rest of the world may look like clutter but to Scottie, each item has a memory attached to it.  After an hour or so behind closed doors in his room, he came out and announced that he was going to leave the twin sized bookshelf/headboard as is and just lean it up against the wall next to his new, much larger, bed.  The weekend project was off to a good start.

This morning I woke up and came downstairs to find a mattress and box spring in the middle of the foyer.  The delivery men are suppose to be here sometime today.  Until then, we will all just squeeze around them.  We have no linens for the new bed.  The guys are going to pick something out later.  We started to look online last night but could not agree on anything so Bruce asked me to “trust him.”  He is going to go out today and pick something out with Scottie.  I should be grateful for a husband and son who are able to pick up the slack while I am recovering.  They are both so “hands-on” for this project.  It really just makes me nervous.

The phrase “out with the old and in with the new” can bring feelings of melancholy to so many.  Why do we save things?  For most of us, we worry that regardless of how unlikely, we might want to use it again someday.  Our belongings and objects carry sentimental value.  They are an anchor to a memory of the past.  We wonder, “Can I really go my entire life without seeing this again?”

All of those thoughts ran through my head as I watched Scottie struggle with boxing up his bookshelf items.  I realized that not everyone wants to or even needs to get rid of stuff.  He is a sentimental soul.  He is a middle child and therefor a peacemaker.  He is non confrontational.  He has always been easy going.  People are drawn to him and like him immediately.

As I walked back up the stairs and passed his room this morning, I peeked inside and saw a big open space ready for the new bed.  His walls were covered in framed sports memorabilia and posters.   On his dresser, among the clutter of paperwork and clothes, were framed pictures of he and his many friends.  On one wall was a shelf filled to overflowing with trophy’s.  And of course, leaning up against a wall in the corner was his old bookshelf headboard.  I walked over to it.  It was  filled with novels, yearbooks and all kinds of mementos.   There were a stack of cards and among them was a  funeral card for his childhood friend, Benny Newsome, who had died 8 years earlier in an automobile accident at the age of 12.  There was another one for his best friend’s mom, Cheryl Kaim, who lost her battle with ovarian cancer last year.  I remember going to that funeral with Scottie.  It was a heartbreaking day for him.  To the left of these items, there was a large program that caught my eye,  It was the program to his grandfather Lambert’s  funeral from last January.  He was such a special man.  He had a special bond with all three of my sons and their cousins.  All the things that had extra special meaning in his life surrounded him every night on that bookshelf.  So for now, it’s a new bed in an old room cluttered with boyhood and high school treasures.  Sometimes it’s just In with the New.