Like a heavy load

Organizer Chelsey Byers Gerstenecke says two categories of items are the easiest to remove from our homes: the ever-present donate pile and the giveaway pile.

But if you’re like me, you also have a stash of ungifted gifts.

For example, years ago you bought someone a gorgeous designer teapot because she was into tea. You considered how to pack this delicate crystal piece for shipping. Such cogitation took a few years. Okay, five. The giftee went back to coffee. The flower tea meant to accompany said gift grew mold. At the decade mark, you found the teapot in the bottom of an unlabeled box in your horrible basement. What did you do with it? Sighed deeply and put it back where you found it.

Standard gifting season may be over, but this could be the year you finish the quilt you started for your niece, send that just-because gift you bought for a dear in Chicago, and polish up and send the necklaces you made for your sister (who wore necklaces daily until she retired last year).

When we screw up gift-giving we say “it’s the thought that counts.”

But what happens to a thought deferred?

“Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

Does it “crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?”

Nope.

“It just sags like a heavy load.”

The literary among you will recognize the poet Langston Hughes inside those quotes.  This genius was talking about dreams deferred, of course, but ungifted gifts, which are often unexpressed thoughts, will bog you down too.

Yet here’s something to consider. Words may also be a gift you’ve put off giving. Have you told special people lately that you love them? You may frequently say this to your kids and your parents and your spouse. I hope you do.

But what about your friends? The ones guiding you through hard times? The one you’ve seen only once in thirty years although she lives in your heart? The cousins you remember fondly?  Even that hairdresser…the one you see only every other month but somehow confide in? Do you tell them you love them?

Ah, Habithacker is a bit maudlin? After all, the teapot-planned-recipient died before seeing that curvy, gorgeously engineered crystal marvel bought to express…yes, love.

This New Year’s, I’ve vowed to clean my pantry and organize my art studio. But somehing else, too: I will tell people what they’ve meant to me.

That includes you, Habithackers. You stay in touch year after year with no word from me. You add your names to the Nest waiting list after eons of my non-activity.  I haven’t forgotten you, my friends. You warm my heart.

Here’s to 2024! New beginnings! (P.S. this site is misbehaving because I’ve not done maintenance in so long. I have to do a big overhaul and use a new theme, so it may look a bit insane for a while.)