the meaning of stuff

i received an email from my dad today stating that he and my mom have begun a process of cleaning out the house in which i grew up. the house in which they still live.

spring cleaning. in january.

he informed me that they've already given away all of the disney movies my brother and i watched over and over as kids - over 25 vhs tapes. they're getting rid of all our stuffed animals, our board games, our toys, and our childhood clothes. he wrote to ask me if there's anything i want them to keep.

i suppose it makes sense for them to engage in this ritual. my parents are essentially "empty nesters" with two grown children, living in a too-big house with too much stuff. they're swimming in the material goods that we, a middle class suburban family of 4, accumulated over the past 25 years.

yet the email hit me painfully hard. my stomach twisted into knots as i read the words, "we are cleaning house." rather than just noting that my parents are taking on this activity to de-clutter and organize their living space, i realized that they may actually be going through a process of mourning.

my parents are suddenly eradicating from their home the boxes of baby clothes, fisher price toys, and dr. seuss books they had been saving to pass on to their future grandchildren. perhaps candy land and the velveteen rabbit only serve now as reminders of the fact that their children, a queer social worker who left home at 18, and an "americanized" IT specialist who lives at home at 24, are not who they hoped they would be. that they will never bear them 3rd generation khoja kids like their heterosexual ismaili peers.

i don't know how to respond to my father's email. i don't know how to tell my parents that the throwing away the stuff of my youth feels like throwing away the stuff of my future. that i DO hope to have a family with my partner (albeit in a different way than they may have imagined). that i hope my parents will love my children wholeheartedly and welcome them into their lives. that i want for my children to know about the "fairy tale stories" LP i got on day my little brother was born, to see the cabbage patch doll i carried until i was 10, to play with the my little ponies my brother and i used to create our own make-believe worlds.

that it meant so much that for over 20 years, my parents invested the energy and space to carefully store those material memories away for my future, and for theirs.

this email was a message to me that they are moving on. perhaps i need to go through some spring cleaning of my own. perhaps it is finally time to release myself from the waning hope that someday, my parents will be able to reconcile their dreams for my adult life with my own.