family – swansroost

On Cleaning Up and Mental Clarity, or Cluttered Space, Cluttered Mind, and Perspective

I recently stood on the roof of the ETEC building of the State University of New York at Albany’s campus and looked west toward home. The day was clear and sunny and the view was a stunner. I live at the base of the Helderberg Mountains (hills really) which are, I think, the dark blue line above the tree line (photo 1), also known as an escarpment. Along this escarpment, and part of a state park, is the Indian Ladder Trail. It is a worn rocky cliff edge path with small caves and seasonal falls of water. It is said that Native American’s used it to travel north and south through the area.

I not often enough travel the 15 minutes from my house to the John Boyd Thacher State Park and look east into the distance at the white shiny rooftops and towers of the SUNY campus. In autumn the view is unbeatable. On this day I had perspective from the opposite direction.

Due to the most recent murder and mayhem that has become these United States I have been thinking about things having to do with perspective. I have newly found that I and some of my family are strongly divided by truth and belief. Others that I have only a shallow FB relationship with are canonizing an evil racists rabblerouser. They are perpetuating his belief that empathy is a new-age fake term for weakness and deception. I can only say that the man was documented as having said bad things about good people all in the name of making money. Murder is wrong, but “how you die doesn’t redeem how you lived.”

As perspective changes with the view so the view changes with some much needed clean up. I KNOW that being the visual person I am my brain functions better when I have a clean palette. When I see space in my world I feel space in my being. Perhaps that is why the view from the park overlook is so soothing to me.

And that is why when I finish one project I do a cleaning of my space in preparation of the next project. However, sometimes that cleansing itself becomes a project. Most recently I picked up a few items along side the road; castoffs of someone else’s life. These were “free to a good home.” My favorite price. Cheap is good. Free is better.

This cabinet tempted me for days before I finally convinced my 6 year old grandson that we needed to load it into my car and bring it home. He, being a kindred spirit, was happy to oblige. And, for the brief 2 block ride home he sat, illegally, in the front seat of my car. Yes, we told his mom. Yes, She was angry. No, it will (probably) not happen again. And the cabinet fits the space next to the dryer perfectly.

I scored this charming set (!) of vintage luggage down the street from the same grandson’s 7th birthday celebration. As I was loading them in the car the “owner” came out of the house and said that her mother had used them on her honeymoon after her 1961 wedding. I’ve given them a cursery inspection and scrub with more to come, but oh, the story these bags can tell! I felt like a old movie bell hop as I tucked them under my arms and marched them into my house. Not gonna lie, I giggled.

I already have a small collection of vintage luggage that I use for storage and display. I have repurposed some and have plans for others. I refer you to a previous post June 20, 2016 “Reflections on an Old Suitcase on a Solstice Day,” But the beauty of this blue matched set is like something, well, from a movie. While I would like to keep them together I am not sure I have the space, physically or mentally. I am thinking of dontating them to the local drama club for their prop room.

As clean up and de-cluttering continue in preparation for the next project in the qeue I practice empathy for the children that have lost parents, the spouses who have lost partners and for the rest of us who have lost the perspective of kindness and understanding while the whole world is on fire.

Right, Rites and What’s Right

Yesterday was the first full day of summer vacation for my grandson who proudly and firmly announced that he is now “officially” in first grade. I had the pleasure of spending this momentous “one and only” day with this boy. We both launched in with the intention of taking everything it had to offer. To begin I took the boy to his first estate sale. A few days ago I put hard thought into whether or not I wanted to bring a child into the fray. Would he become frightened in a crowd of sometimes over zealous treasure hunters? Would he follow instructions, break something or get hurt himself? Setting my own desires aside, because there was a lot of vinyl (my passion for another posting), I didn’t want this not yet seven year old to have a negative experience in any way.

I am getting to be pretty estate sale savvy. I bring a specific bag, now dubbed the “$30 bag” because that is usually how much I pay to fill it. I wear proper foot wear. I make sure I am hands free, have readers at easy access and plenty of cash. Another thing I have learned is to dress for the heat of tight spaces and many bodies. A trip up three flights of steep old stairs to an attic oven must be taken with an abundance of caution and care.

Faces are becoming familiar (and younger!) and smiles more frequent as I navigate this increasingly popular and fashionable form of stuff reduction. I consider it my contribution to keeping things out of the landfills. I also consciously look with honor and respect at the sum of someone else’s life and passion and feel it is my calling to carry things forward in to a new purpose in life. It just feels right.

This day’s sale of choice was, to repeat this brilliant child’s new favorite response to everything and to the photos I showed him on my phone estate sale app, EPIC!! In listening to the basement chatter later we learned that there were 8,000 (yes 3 zeros) small vehicles of the Matchbox/Hot Wheels variety as well as other less known (to me) brands. A true life time achievement for a gentleman who apparently had spent his adult life as a plumber but who never lost his love of the toy car.

I suppose I had made the decision to attend prior to showing my grandson the photos. His response to the “Do ya wanna?” was epic in its own right. Decision made I outfitted the lad with a small lightweight close fitted back pack so he too would have hands free to navigate doors, stairs, and tall persons. He easily agreed to keep the number of vehicles to 10. This was highly risky on my part as I had zero idea how much this particular 10 were going to cost me.

Neither of us were prepared for the reality. They were everywhere; on shelves, in cabinets, pinned to the walls, tucked behind railings, single in original packaging (IOP) multiple IOP, single parked everywhere.

Magical. Delightful. A child’s dream.

We were part of an early crowd so most of the 8,000 were still present. A little sign priced them: $1 for opened, $3 for IOP, $5 for multi-IOP.

Being a female of a certain age I was not given toy cars and trucks to play with. It wasn’t proper. It wasn’t right.

I had dolls. Of course. Yet I coveted my three older brothers’ cars. Truth be told I also wanted their marbles and jackknives. Mumblety-peg anyone? Then when I had two girls of my own I foolishly continued the unenlightened and expected path of ruffles and dolls. It wasn’t until I had a grandson that I allowed myself to “have” cars.

Latest Additions to My Coffee Can Garage

By the time the second grandson arrived I had a decent coffee can collection, some pinched, I mean inherited (!) from my brothers, and the race tracks to go with them. So this seven year old had benefitted from my “need for speed” although my need also includes style, form and substance. I have grown to accept that my cars seldom win; but boy oh boy do they lose beautifully.

While driving home I explained that we needed to “check” his purchases on Goggle to see if any may be worth significantly more money than we paid for them. His “Why?” was a bit gentler than his mother’s had been when I told her someone wanted to buy her precious beanie baby for way more than we had paid for it.

Sure enough the first $3 car we checked was selling for $30 on Ebay. I suggested he might want to leave that one IOP and play with the other 9 and he reluctantly agreed. After a bubbly soak of the new old cars, and our selves, at the “car wash” we settled in to lunch and video games to wait for the sun to dry our wheels before the races could commence.

Very suddenly there was much excitement! The first front baby tooth lost its battle to a chicken nugget and this little boy announced that he is kinda like an adult now. There was no blood, no tears, just an anxious need to save it to show mom and dad…..and the tooth fairy. Soft cooked noodles replaced the remaining nuggets and this new status carried on. Rightfully so.

Rite of passage: Corn on the cob season minus the choppers.

Mid way through this stellar day I received news of SCOTUS recent edict. Basically, if I understand it correctly District judges can no longer declare nationally. Truthfully I have always found it difficult to understand why they ever could; hence the word ‘district.’

The nuances and impacts of this decision are yet to be seen. Frankly the so very un-right wrong things that continue to occur daily under this nation’s gangster administration make me want to return to the innocence of baby teeth, bubbles and water hose. I want the tooth fairy to be real.

More Or Less?

It’s Saturday morning and I am trying to stay on task, keep my train of thought from derailing and get this said. Thought, singular.

This is a second try at articulating something that has been on my mind since January 20, 2025. Something that has gotten louder and more urgent as the world that I chose to believe was real has shown it’s real truth through the attempt to force the vile and disgusting beliefs of the few onto the rest of us.

With Trump’s first administration I said out loud that his putrid behavior was giving permission to those who have always believed to take it out of their living room’s and bring it onto the streets. I was not wrong.

Now here we are on the brink of losing what Ben Franklin said, “was ours, if we could keep it.” Only about 250 years later this “experiment’ is threatened. Google says a generation is about 20-30 years. With that in mind one can say that our nation is only about 10 generations old. Maybe 30% of our historical population was THERE in the beginning?! If I am mathing correctly then all of this proves out what we all know; our nation is in it’s infancy. We are a baby nation. A baby nation that is cutting it’s teeth on each other and fighting over favorite stuffies and who gets to rule the playpen.

As an aging member of this nursery school I have been asking myself what I can, should, or want to do with what I believe to be my limited time on this side of the dirt. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a terminal illness or even limiting health issues. With proper care, feeding and good genes I may even make it into my 90’s; stuff my children’s nightmares are made of. But I have paid taxes, voted, contributed to society, and raised my children, I think pretty well. So, now I receive my hard earned pension and social security.

The world is a very different place now than in my youth, my child rearing years and even since I retired in 2016. Almost daily I have had to re-learn processes just to participate and it is exhausting. I have been a regular target of scammers. These days every email I get, web site I visit and contact I make leave me doubting authenticity. The amount of necessary time I have had to take to navigate all this is astounding. It’s been like a part time job. So I ask, “where is the joy?” Where is the unlimited “time” in this time of life in which I can just live and not worry? Where I can just paint, and not have to paint a protest sign. Where I can shop and not have to boycott.

This is my personal struggle. Every day I feel that more and more ugly is rearing it’s head. And I am wondering if ANY of it is really worth “saving” or if letting it all break just might be a good thing. Would I say that if I relied on government assistance to feed and cloth and keep a roof over my head? Maybe not. Am I a bad person for thinking it? Possibly. But I am thinking it. How much skin do I have in this game?

Remembering Grandfather

I spent the day making golumpki. That’s stuffed cabbage to persons not of Polish heritage. It takes the day, or longer to make them so it doesn’t happen but maybe once a year. You need a large head of cabbage and the month of March is when cabbage is on sale. On sale for the Irish, not the Polish. Golumpki is one of only maybe a handful of things I ever stood by my mother’s side to watch and learn to make; another was her coleslaw. Both of these dishes she was always asked to provide for family gatherings. Both made with cabbage. She owned the cabbage.

Naturally when making golumpki I think of my mom. This time I thought of her skill at making this traditional Polish dish. My mother was not Polish. Not even a little bit. So where did she get the recipe? In whose kitchen, by whose side did she stand watching and learning?

My Polish comes from my father’s side; Marauszwski. My mother’s golumpki were better than my paternal grandmother’s. She, I discovered fairly recently, was mostly French Canadian. And she made pale, bland golumpki of which now, understanding her heritage, I can forgive her. If you put a pan of her golumpki next to a pot of my mother’s golumpki there would be no comparison. I know this because at my grandfather’s funeral there they sat, side by side. And my mother’s were gone first. This really bothered my grandmother, as I am sure my mother noticed and secretly crowed over. There was no love lost between those two. My mother would never have taken a lesson in anything from my grandmother. So where did the WASPy girl learn how to make an ethnic masterpiece?

My paternal grandfather was second generation Polish American. I know this because on his death certificate his father’s birth place is listed as POLAND, all in caps. Just like that. No village, town, city or anything other than POLAND. At some point in my pursuit of trivial information I learned that the -ski at the end of many Polish names you see means “son of” and when asked by customs staff what their name was they all said “the son of so-in-so.” and customs staff being as they were recorded it as spoken; hence the many -skis.

My grandfather died at 65 years of age when I was in the 8th grade. I have few memories of him as my parents divorced when I was still in diapers. It was not a amicable divorce. My father re-married quickly and was rarely seen. My grandfather was perhaps more present in my younger years and there are a few very special memories I have of times spent with him.

Baby Doll. If she ever had a name I don’t recall it now.

The earliest is when he gave me a gift. It was a beautiful baby doll in a red and white pin strip pajama and stocking hat. I still have that doll, pictured above. I have had to replace her eyes and give her new hair as 60 plus years has worn on both of us. And of course the pjs are gone. But she is still beautiful and I still remember my grandfather sitting in his chair smoking his Camel (no filter) cigarette watching me as I unwrapped her. He had to help me take her from her box as I was too small to know how. I am pretty sure it must have been Christmas time but I couldn’t swear to it. Years later my adoptive father, Frank Sheridan, took me to College Point, Long Island to visit his mother and she gave me a carboard box with string on it to pull my baby around in. I had that box with string for a very long time.

Another memory of adventure with my Grandfather Marauszwski was, I think, an indicator of the kind of woman I would grow to be. I must have been about 5 years old and he put me in the front seat (!) of his pale yellow Cadillac. I remember the color well. The roof when closed was soft and black. And that day, with the roof open, he took me to his mother’s house. She lived in an upstairs apartment with a short sloped driveway off a busy street in town. I didn’t know my great-grandmother. I have no memories of her now. But that day my grandfather told me to sit in the car while he ran in to speak to his mother. And I, being who I am, thought it would be fun to make believe driving the car. I remember pushing the big black radio buttons and turning the dials and then moving in place behind the steering wheel. I turned the wheel and hummed car noises, happily making believe that I was driving. Then I reached over and pulled the long shinny stick toward my self and moved the car out of park. The next thing I knew me and the car were really moving, backward into the street. My grandfather came running out of the building and hopped over and into the car to step on the break. To me he was a hero. My mother wouldn’t have thought so but she probably never found out. And was it from my great-grandmother that my mother learned to make golumpki? Maybe.

One final story of my grandfather; again just he and I off adventuring, this time in one of his many large trucks as he owned a moving company. One hot summer day we went to a swimming hole. Where, I don’t know, but my grandfather told me to say away from a particular section because that was where the snapping turtles lived. I do recall that there were other people in the water and in retrospect I wonder if he was just pulling my leg. But at the time I was too young to understand the humor. Truthfully though I still don’t “get it” often times.

By this time I was older, maybe 7 or 8. My grandfather very gallantly hung towels in all the windows and over the doors of the cab of the truck making me a dressing room. He then stood guard so I could change into my bathing suit. He understood that I was shy and I was grateful.

It is fascinating how a smell, a sound, or even a task can trigger a memory. A memory so vivid that you can still see the sun shinning or feel the heat from the stove rising. I am grateful for these records; for the ability to recall them now. Just a few months ago my 22 year old grandson asked me to sometime tell him my stories; difficult to do on cue. Perhaps this is a beginning.