Oniontown Pastoral: About Your Dresser, My Dear

Wife Kathy was raised in a house where the dining room table was a catch all for an infinity of whatever: the daily mail; a can of cream of celery soup that didn’t get put away with the other groceries; a lonely knee-high stocking; coupons and bum lottery tickets.

Mind you, the place was clean, but disheveled—a rumbled literature professor of dwellings, let’s say. The table was cleared for supper, but amassed new treasures by bedtime.

Meanwhile, the dining room table in the Coleman household fifty years ago was tabula rasa, ever ready for meals. Our miscellany was exiled to the “junk drawer,” which held a demolition derby of, well, junk: spent batteries; bobby pins Mom used by the hundreds; Elmer’s glue with the lid crusted shut and a roll of masking tape linty on the sides; and, gloriosky, tangles of weary rubber bands and twist-ties from bread bags we were not to throw away.

The principle—I mention this as an aside—was that messes were best kept contained, hidden from sight. A jar containing three bobbing pepperonchinis lived at the back of our refrigerator for most of my childhood, but there was no shame in that. The icebox, as Dad used to call it, was clean enough, but full. Nobody could see those peppers without a hard hat light.

I’ve been aware of the contrast between the tables of Kathy’s youth and mine since our beginning. It was the kind of difference that could have gotten prickly if we had let it.

At our house on Parkway Drive in Erie these days, my wife’s strategy for junk management prevails. I generally keep the dining room table a blank slate, but several dumping grounds maintain a thriving business: under the lamp on Kathy’s small drop-top desk, perfect for free bank pens and our grandsons’ rogue, toe-stabbing Triceratops; the far end of the kitchen counter, begging for restaurant soda cracker packets and a crescent wrench meant for the basement; and, our frantic hub of this and that, Kathy’s bedroom dresser.

“I’m going to get that cleared off,” she says, pausing while dressing in the morning or passing through on an errand. Once a year or so, she faces down the accumulation. Some items are relocated, while others go clunk into the trash. Medicine bottles are no brainers, as are the nail polish remover, bergamot-scented foaming hand soap and sunglasses. But there’s so much more.

Last week Kathy came into the kitchen, where Micah and I were conducting an end-of-day post mortem. Playing upon our grown son’s taste for all things eccentric and provocative, she held out a shawl made of leopard print silk and said, “I don’t imagine you’d be interested in this.” This garment, I should add, boasted a black cotton fringe with bulbous tassels. She won it at friend Joe’s cancer fundraiser and tossed it guess where.

“Are you kidding?” he practically howled. “Yeah!” Since that moment, he has constantly worn the shawl over his bare shoulders, praising its comfort and surprising warmth.

Ah, the wonders wrought by my wife’s knack for acquisition and messy dresser. Last week while making the bed, I decided once and for all that our current junk arrangement is for the best.

Here’s the thing. Making sure that the hail of articles pelting our souls gets sorted and put in just the right place takes energy. It really does. The brain has only so much room to accommodate the questions, pleas and absurdities that blow in day by day. If you’re not mindful, priorities get mistaken for yard sale bric-a-brac.

In this spirit, then, here’s a closing addressed to Kathy, who reads everything I write.

Thank you, my dear. You work your rear end off full time so that I can serve in Oniontown part time and devote attention to writing. You wonder non-stop about how to bring our grandsons joy. Everybody you touch receives blessings: a campy silk shawl for our son; blankets straight from our dining room table for newborn twins; a handmade Advent calendar for your Goddaughter.

You were created by God to create in turn. My eyes aren’t drawn so much to your pill bottles and hair conditioner as to the framed words above them: “A life is much to ask of anyone, but not too much to give to love.” So please leave that dresser of yours be. It reminds me of your love, which whispers to clutter that it will just have to wait.