Recycle Day

RECYCLE DAY

By Courtney Pierce

In the summer of 2011, my ex-husband and I committed an act of treason. We decided to deal with our stuff in the attic. Not a feat for the faint-hearted in the steamy heat of Houston.

For twenty-five years we moved around the country to grab the swinging ring of a promotion—mostly mine—but without children, uprooting was an easy decision. Always moving forward. In each case, we had only a weekend to buy a house in an unfamiliar state. The corporate movers would swoop in to pack up everything in too much paper and send us on our way: San Francisco to Portland to Minneapolis to Houston. The boxes in the attic went with us—all of them—even my vocal scores from my college days in the seventies, tangible dreams of becoming an opera singer. We moved the beta hifi machine that didn’t work, along with the six boxes of eighties music videos and recordings of Dallas and Falcon Crest. All unplayable.

But the last move, back to Portland, would whisk us away from the corporate grind. With no deadline, we took the time to sort through the aging relics of two aging relics. Our modern-style home in Portland had no basement or attic. Treasures morphed to junk when there was no place to put them.

The banter sessions during the shedding process were hilarious and priceless—and uncomfortable. Tough love was tough. These markers of time had shaped who we were as individuals, and as a couple. When I opened the boxes in the corner of the attic—the music of another life—my heart sank. The brittle pages had been chewed beyond recognition. A tiny dead mouse, full of melody, had already made this gargantuan decision for me without my permission. A portend of things to come, but I didn't know it.

I lugged the boxes outside to the curb for the scavengers. Hourly, I padded to the front window to check on their welfare. The music sat untouched, their thirsty pages drinking in the humidity that gave no life. The dead scores were alive only to me.  

On recycle day, the rumble of the truck sounded like an approaching storm. I dashed outside to witness the aspirations of a younger woman grind away in the hungry teeth of the metal cruncher. In slow motion, the recycle man launched the boxes, one after another. When the last one missed the mark and hit the rim, a cacophony of musical notes floated to the pavement in an ugly symphony—Mozart mixed with Stravinsky; Bach melted into Brahms under a final aria of Bizet. Carmen had shattered her knees as she crumpled in a heap.

Unthinkable!

I didn’t know what to grab first. I scooped up as much as I could hold in my arms. My wild eyes met the recycle man’s in search of empathy, an apology, anything to acknowledge the disrespect shown to my failed dreams. Instead, he said, “Thanks, ma’am. I shoulda aimed higher.”

As I turned back to the house, alone and dejected, I spotted one soiled page in the gutter. The truck had moved on, its whirling blades out of reach. I stared at the opening of “Laudate Dominum” from Mozart’s Solemn Vespers; my debut solo back in 1979. The penciled notations for sounding like an angel had faded but were still visible. How nervous I’d been in front of those hundreds of people. But when the downbeat had started, I'd gone to another place. That same year I had married as a twenty-year-old bride. We grew up together, grew young together, grew apart together. A wipe of the smudged mud from the paper straightened my shoulders. I took a deep breath. The melody kept time with my steps back inside the house.

A magnetic pull floated me upstairs to the special drawer in my grandfather's bureau. I tucked the page beneath my lingerie. A romantic memory was added to its significance that day; the day I almost let go of the music. It would become a small reminder that I had, indeed, aimed higher. Now, at the age of fifty-seven, a new man in my life appreciates that music, my dreams, and me. For the rest of my life. We’re getting married in June, and I can't wait for life to start anew.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her bossy cat. She writes for baby boomers. By day, Courtney is an executive in the entertainment industry and uses her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor and mystery. She has studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, she is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, She Writes, and Sisters in Crime. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal. 

Check out all of Courtney's books at:

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com. Both print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com

 

The Dushane Sisters are back in Indigo Lake. More laughs, more tears...and more

trouble. Protecting Mom's reputation might get the sisters killed―or give one of them the story she's been dying to live.

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Colorful characters come alive in Courtney's trilogy about the Dushane sisters. Beginning with The Executrix, three middle-age sisters find a manuscript for a murder mystery in their mother's safe after her death. Mom’s book gives them a whole new view of their mother and their future. Is it fiction . . . or truth? 

Get out the popcorn as the Dushane Sisters Trilogy comes to a scrumptious conclusion with Indigo Legacy. Due out in early 2017.

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF A HOARDER - MARGARET TANNER

DE-CLUTTERING, A NECESSARY EVIL?

 I am a clutter collector from way back. I figure why throw anything out; you never know when you might need it. I inherited the hoarder gene.

“Waste not, want not” was my mother’s motto and she lived by it the whole of her life. Maybe it was because she lived through the great depression of the 1930’s and World War 2, that she would use and re-use, save and squirrel away stuff. Our house was never untidy, because most of the hoarded items were well out of sight. 

I should have learned my lesson after my dear mother died about 20 years ago and my sister and I had to clear out her house. To say it was a nightmare was an understatement. It took weeks. My mother had kept receipts from the 1940’s, even her World War 2 ration book. And speaking of books, she had hundreds of them. Then there were the ornaments, pretty little knick-knacks that reposed on every shelf or level surface in the house. Boxes of china. Well, you get the idea.

Now you would think that after all this trauma and angst, I would have dashed home and gone through my own cupboards.  I didn’t, but I did take a lot of my mother’s stuff with me.  Well, how could I let it go?  All those little treasures.

My mother-in-law passed away, same story, I kept a lot of her things too. I was a hoarder.  It came as naturally as breathing or eating.

Well friends, retribution did come. The youngest of our sons finally left home, so hubby and I decided it was time to downsize. We bought a smaller house, and put our larger house on the market. “We’ve got a lot of stuff here, we’ll have to get rid of it,” hubby says.

Over my dead body. “No, we won’t do anything rash,” I said, “there’s plenty of time to work out what we want to keep.”

A week before the auction of our house, my husband had to have heart by-pass surgery, so I had to go on with the sale alone. After the auction and hubby’s successful operation, I had to start packing, because when he came home he couldn’t do anything for eight weeks. I really hit the panic button because we had a short settlement. Forty days to clear out all our stuff, that of my mother and mother-in-law (things I had kept, and shouldn’t have). Well, it was a nightmare. I did most of it on my own.  I don’t know how many trips I made to donate all these “treasures” to the second hand thrift shop (we call them Op shops here in Australia.  They are run by charities to raise money to help the less fortunate).  And I did help the less fortunate - big time.  The Op shop manager must have thought I was Mother Teresa re-incarnated.

It was terrible. I cried because I had to give away my ‘treasures, mum’s treasures and my mother in-law’s treasures’. Worse still, was the time it took to pack them and deliver them to the Op shop. 

With the clock ticking, I had to be ruthless – and I was.

If you are even contemplating moving house, start to get rid of your surplus stuff early.  In fact, don’t collect it in the first place.  A lady once told me that if she didn’t wear a dress for a year, she was probably never going to wear it again, and she got rid of it. Smart lady. Wish I had such courage.  I still cling to my favourite dresses, hey I might lose weight and they will fit me again???

The moral of this story is -  don’t hoard. De-clutter as much as possible, because one day you will have to sort it out, or your children will have to sort it out.  

The same goes for your writing.  Be ruthless. If the manuscript you have expended blood, sweat and tears over isn’t working, discard it.  Temporarily cast it into your bottom drawer is what I mean. Don’t destroy it, because you might be able to resurrect it at a later date.  Start on something fresh and new. Once you get your writing tastebuds tingling again with a new premise, a feisty heroine and a spunky hero, the words will start flowing until they become a torrent.

Never give up. It is a steep climb to the top of the publishing mountain, but oh what a view once you get there.

http://www.margarettanner.com/

Margaret writes spicy historical romance set in Australia.

 FIERY POSSESSION

American wild west versus Australian frontier.
Explosive results and tragedy follow Jo Saunders and Luke Campton when they cross the fine line dividing love and hate.

http://www.amazon.com/Fiery-Possession-ebook/dp/B00C2JOK6M/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364548536&sr=1-1&keywords=fiery+possession