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PDF versionDon't Try This At Home
by Joe Ferullo on Feb. 17, 2010
It was an experiment in nostalgia that backfired, badly -- and I'm still trying to recover.
Many years ago, I thought it would be fun to save my annual employee photo identification cards, and keep them in a neat stack. In my much younger mind, I imagined a day far off in the future when I would happen upon them in surprise and delight, shaking my head at the flood of happy memories each year brought forth.
Not so much.
Instead, here's what happened: about two weeks ago, we moved into our new house and began the slow the process of unboxing the things we hold near and dear. This was a daunting task, because we were surrounded by these crazy cartons -- all of them marked with vague tags, such as: "For storage." On top of that, we did fine without any of this for more than a year while we lived in an apartment and shoved these other items away in a storage facility filled to brim -- like that scene near the end of "Citizen Kane."
Still, I was intrigued. In there, perhaps, was my "Rosebud" -- some item wrapped and packed that I had long forgotten but that (once found) would instantly transport me to another time and place.
And so the work started: out came ceramic platters and china plates not seen since our wedding 20 years ago; children's books with pages torn and yellowed; awards for achievements only partially recalled. In another box, tax documents from 1994 that for some unknowable reason I felt the need to keep near. Many of these things I happily chucked into a corner pile of the front driveway marked "Garage Sale."
Then I hit upon it: a simple box, marked only "Joe's Stuff." A couple of high school yearbooks lay in there, next to an old Rolling Stone marking the death of John Lennon, and my eighth grade diploma from Immaculate Conception on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. All brought smiles and memories.
Until the ID cards tumbled out. Uh-oh. This was different. This was no long and winding road trip down memory lane -- this was a straight shot into the heart of the aging process. Here was a gym ID card from 1982. And there, CBS in New York -- 1985. Then CBS Los Angeles, 1987. Then NBC News: 1994, 1995, 1996 ... and on and on and on and on. Years of aging and changing and shifting and listing -- laid end-to-end with incontrovertible clarity.
Now, sure, look -- like most humans, I take a terrible ID photo, and, yes, trust me, I rationalized a good chunk of my horror to that: these were not just pictures of my getting older. These were intentionally grotesque pictures of me getting older.
NCR: February 3-16, 2012
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Still, I felt myself tumble down a black hole of vanity and despair with a velocity I was certain nothing could stop. I slammed the box of "Joe's Stuff" shut and, trying to distract myself, opened another box -- this one unhelpfully marked "Misc."
And in there, I uncovered the antidote: more photos. But these were of me, my wife, and our kids. Starting when our oldest was just born -- random snapshots and duplicate pictures that didn't make it into our albums and frames. In these photos, the years rolled in one-by-one as well, but told a far kinder tale: the story of family building a history while moving forward -- Christmas-after-Christmas on the department store Santa's lap; Easter-after-Easter of faces covered in chocolate; aunt, uncles and cousins dipping in and out and yet somehow always there.
That was much better and I sighed with deep relief. But now I don't know what to do with the ID cards -- what if I put them back in their bag, and tucked them away once again? Then what? Would I find them when I was eighty or ninety and have a coronary right there on the spot? Or would I just be happy to have lived long enough to uncover them once again?
I know -- I'll put them back in the same bag as the random family photos, a nicer, gentler mix.
That will be something I'll look forward to finding. I hope.
Ah. I feel your pain, bro. I
Ah. I feel your pain, bro.
I will be moving next week myself, after 26 years of living in the same place (the co-op apartment in Ocean Parkway where my incredibly brazen frist-cat-in-Brooklyn, Sitzie, once tried to rip the belt loop off your jeans--remember, Joe?). And I, too, had a weird experience in the packing process.
I will state at the outset that even after being rejected three times by three different co-op boards (and that's another rant, for another column, my friend), I approached the task of packing with the kind of trepidation that might characterize, for example, a root canal, a barium enema, or your average bar exam. (Or perhaps going on a date with a certain college classmate by the initials of H. G.) The reason for this is that I had not done any work at all in supervising, controlling, editing, organizing, or dealing with my personal possessions since 2000.
2000 was the year that I was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Until then, I had done a commendable job of going through my closets twice a year, giving away old clothes to charities or friends, or even junking the really ratty things. Eminem had nothing on me. But pretty much all of 2000 was given over to surgeries and treatments, and I didn't do my usual biennial Martha Stewart moment.
Nor in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, or 2009. One of the hallway closets was so packed I was afraid to open the door lest something clunk me on the head, causing brain damage. I certainly can't claim the same excuse as I did in 2000, because I never had radiation or chemotherapy again even though I had two recurrences of the disease. (I chose to have two mastectomies, in 2001 and 2006, which were nothing compared to the barf-a-rama that chemo was, for example.) But something inside me changed. I suddently found it hard to do anything that required long-term organizing or planning. (For more on this phenomenon, see the book "Chemo Brain" by Ellen Clegg. I appear in chapter 3 as a person who could at first could barely keep it together administratively, although I later found good relief in a drug prescription drug called Focalin.)
The winnowing out of possessions, as annoying and stressful as it was, was also interesting. I found a LOT of things I couldn't remember acquiring. Where did I get this? Did I buy it? Was it a gift? Was I drunk when I went shopping? I asked myself these questions repeatedly to explain the sudden appearance of the olive green suede boots, for example. Who knew? Not I!
And as for those work IDs, of course you're horrified. It isn't really about getting older--and for crying out loud, I've seen recent pictures of you on the Internet, and you look just fine. Thinner than I remember you, but quite recognizable in the face, i.e., still the winner of the Sylvester Stallone Look-Alike Contest. (On the other hand, you would not recognize me on the street, as I am, literally, twice the woman I was at Barnard.) The truly gut-wrenching thing is that you're old enough to remember when work was merely work. Now, in the age of downsizing, corporate cluelessness, and contant Blackberrying, work is not work, it's a form of daily torture.
When I look back on my life, there are two things that I regret hugely. One is not having married (I had no idea how bereft I would feel when my parents passed away and I knew I would have to live the rest of my life as a SCOOC [Single, Childless, Orphaned Only Child]). The other thing is how much time and energy I have had to invest in getting and keeping employment. My last job search lasted a full year. By the end of that year I was so flipped out by the job search that I had developed a terrible case of bruxism (tooth-grinding) in response to the stress. I would send out resumes by the hundreds, go on interview after interview, and nobody would hire me. I kept thinking, what more do I have to prove? I attended an Ivy League college. I'm a perfectionist and a workaholic. I type 75 words a minute with no mistakes. I know the difference between a colon and a semi-colon, therefore with an e and therefor without an e. What more could these employers possibly want?
Of course. They want me to be the same weight I was at Barnard!
Best regards,
Sedra
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