The Hat I Didn't Donate

I've been working hard lately on my living space. We have been editing and organizing our belongings. The things we are keeping are lovingly displayed, put away mindfully and stored in ways that make sense.

Many items have lost their relevance. If they are in good enough condition, we've donated them to family members, the farmer’s market fabric recycling or the Salvation Army.

We've been able to throw away lots of old financial records and stuff in poor condition that is just taking up what I like to call valuable real estate. We live in NYC. We have big closets, but no attic or basement. We don't even have a junk room.

It's been quite mind-clearing and liberating.

Recently I opened a huge, beat up Rubbermaid box where we've been keeping our off -season items for as long as I can remember. In the spring and then the fall, there is an activity I call switching the closets and drawers. It's exactly what it sounds like. Because I have growing children, it also means editing out outgrown clothes and incorporating the larger things I've saved.

I started sorting things. I came across a winter hat. This is a hat that is no longer worn. My first instinct was to put it in the rapidly growing donate pile. The pile with the bathing suits that no longer fit, the tee shirts that are deemed too babyish and the shorts that one child wore that would certainly be too scratchy for the other.

The idea of donating this hat felt suddenly devastating. So I stopped and listened. Because I have successfully given away so many things without a trace of heartache or hesitation gave me special credibility in my own mind. It looked as though I needed to keep this hat.

This hat did not belong to my son that died. It belonged to the living, breathing, growth spurting boy, bustling about with his size 11 feet, taking up his fair share of space, both mental and physical.

This hat wasn't one from his babyhood, sweetly placed on that tiny head when I brought him home from the hospital in December of 2000.

This hat is more recent that that.

The hat was either a Christmas gift or a birthday gift from my mother. She has a knack for figuring out what this child needs to wear when. The hat was a big hit with him. It's soft and velvety on the outside and fluffy and plush on the inside. It had flaps to keep his ears covered. Ever since he was a newborn, this kid has hated any kind of wind.

He wore this hat for three winters straight, from 6th through 8th grade. This hat kept him warm and comfortable that whole time.

I could list all of the things that my boy and I experienced together while he was wearing the hat. Suffice it to say I will never forget these times. Three winters is a long time in a boy's life. A lot of growing happened and a lot of making me proud.

The hat became a signature piece for my boy. Until it wasn't anymore.

In December of last year, my son surprised me by wanting to browse with me at a craft fair. He suddenly had the bandwidth for this activity. He selected a brand new hat out of the blue. It was an updated classic. When he tried it on, he looked like a combination of a GQ model and a hipster.

He wore this hat every day until he misplaced it, and then located it again in the lost and found box at school. I finally put it away in the off-season drawer. Our renovation affords us the luxury of getting rid of the banged up, cracked Rubbermaid box.

This was the new signature piece. It was the 9th grade hat. Time will tell if it is also a winter of 10th grade hat or not. I suspect it will. He was pretty happy to see it once he laid his hands on it again.

There are times when I feel no need to keep an object. I'll remember the Pokémon pajamas in my heart. I have pictures of him wearing the threadbare Little Miss Spider shirt he was so attached to when he was five.

But this hat is different. My son has moved on to a new hat. It's only right. Growing up is his job. I'm glad to see him do this. Especially after what transpired before, with his brother.

It was his hat for so long that I cannot imagine anyone else wearing it. It's like Patrick Ewing and the number 33 jersey. Number 33 is his number. And this is my son's hat.

There is a small pile of precious clothing at the bottom of the Rubbermaid box. These are the items that I didn't let go of. The baby stuff is somewhere else with the baby stuff. This is different.

The purple sweater my son wore day in day out in nursery school will be kept. There are other signature pieces too. They won't live in the Rubbermaid box anymore. I'm getting something nice for them from The Container Store.

I'm keeping this hat for the rest of my life.

I'll be 75 years old someday, god willing. I'll have my box on an accessible shelf. I'll take it down and run my fingers over the soft clothes. They're all soft because that's all this child will wear.

I'll remember the fit he pitched on a busy sidewalk one day and how he recovered and then devoured some pizza. I'll remember how he survived croup like nothing ever happened. I'll remember the extraordinary two year old who said please put me to bed mommy when it looked like I might be too busy socializing to remember that it was past his bedtime.

The other day my son and I were having a conversation. He was having a craving for his Dad's brownies. Let's ask dad to make some, I said.

What will happen when I grow up and I don't live with you anymore, he asked? Will dad send me some brownies? He seemed to need some reassurance.

Of course he will, I said. Dad could also use your kitchen to do some baking for you when we come to visit.  Would you like us to visit? He nodded yes.

I thought about the idea that my son could grow up to be a baker like his dad. Maybe he'll make his own brownies and invent his own recipe. I decided not to mention that yet. At this juncture I like thinking about the first scenario better.

Here is the hat I will be keeping for the rest of my life.

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The Beauty In The Before

Before the before I'm talking about today, we were just living in our apartment. When we moved in, everything was freshly painted and new and nice. Almost all of the apartment was working for us. Sure, some of it was a bit mismatched. It wasn't glamorous. But it was a cozy, functional place to raise our children and a sweet place to come home to.

Over time, some parts of the apartment stopped working as well. We cobbled things together until more of it wasn't working. Then we started the renovation.

One day recently, I was having a private conversation with a friend using Facebook Message. I don’t remember what started it. We were having a nice dialogue and then the subject turned toward the renovation.

The friend wanted to know why I wasn’t posting any pictures of our apartment on Facebook. This is a reasonable question. I like to post things on Facebook.

My answer at the time was because the apartment isn’t finished yet.

Almost immediately, I realized both the error and irony of my answer. The error and irony comes from two places.

All though this renovation process, I’ve been focusing on the word process. The apartment will never be finished, finished. Even after the shelves are delivered, the furniture in place, the paint job done and the rug laid, there will still be more things to do.

We will need to possibly get more shelves made once we’ve unpacked. Well have to find a spot for my new printer. There may be some trips to the Container Store to maximize the insides of our closets.

There is bedding and throw pillows and area rugs. That is what I’m calling the fun part.

So if I’m waiting for the apartment to be finished before posting pictures that is absolutely ridiculous. I’m taking it back. Forget I said anything.

I then considered the concept of the before picture. Initially, this idea was worrisome. Who wants to post pictures of piles of stuff, half packed boxes, dusty corners and walls in extreme need of a paint job?

Then I realized that I am in fact, the person who should do this.

I am a person who finds beauty in things like trash, dead plants, weeds and city streets.  Once I remembered that, I looked at my apartment with new eyes.

I started taking some pictures. Not your classic before and after views that one sees on HGTV. I’m sure I’ll take those too. Just not now.

The pictures I took were of things that are suddenly ephemeral. They’re about to be painted over, taken down, re-purposed, re-organized, given away. They’re about to be swept up, boxed up, cleaned, thrown out, replaced or refinished.

I am welcoming in the new and saying goodbye to the old. Saying goodbye isn’t easy. These photographs are my way of saying see you later. I won’t forget about the scratches, the corner, the outgrown toy, the shelf brackets or the milk crates. The truth is that I don’t forget much of anything.

Here is my version of the before.

We are saving all of our Fresh Direct delivery boxes for packing. There are a pile of them wedged between the treadmill and some CDs.

There will be new shelves to hold this pile of books Jeremy has earmarked to read. Our coasters have seen better days. The new ones Jeremy got me for Christmas will soon be gracing our tables.

Jeremy has always loved sharing music. Back in the day, he loved making mixtapes. The old-school nature of them bugged me for a while, but I’ve learned to love them again. The sunlight has faded the labels, but they are still readable.

We’ve outgrown these bracketed shelves and have packed up what used to be there. They look spare and pretty in the late afternoon light. Some pretty peeling paint will soon be covered in a color called Horizon. Hannah’s art, rolled up and ready for TLC treatment.

Hannah got a jewelry box kit one birthday. It sits atop a list of Noah’s and a scratched filing cabinet that will live inside a closet. This copy paper catching the light will have a proper home soon.

I used this pretty notebook for ideas back in my commercial still life photography days. I took a photograph of it before pitching it. This was my kitchen table throughout my childhood. My parents were nice enough to give it to us after they remodeled their kitchen. We are having it refinished, but the scratches are so interesting I wanted to record them.

Jeremy truly treasures his music and that has blessed our family. These piles are awaiting alphabetization and storage. Soon they will have a lovely place to call home.

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No Scary Boxes

No Scary Boxes

Jeremy and I are packing. We are having our apartment painted soon. We are having beautiful new shelving and dressers custom made. We are getting some new rugs and furniture. We are having some of our old furniture refinished.

We are re-purposing some of our old furniture. One of our shelves is being turned on its side, placed on the rug and turned into a coffee table. I’m looking for a beautiful fabric runner to put on top. I got the idea from an article I saw on Twitter.

We are going to IKEA.

Walls are not being taken down. Nothing structural is happening. But rooms that were used for one thing will be used for another. Hannah and Noah will each have their own rooms.

This is a big deal.

Jeremy and I are assessing our possessions. There are four categories that our possessions fit into.

Some possessions are still good, but we don't want them anymore. One of our criteria for keeping things is that the item be relevant to us at this time in our lives. So we have given some things to extended family members. The majority of things that we are giving away are going to a huge, sparkling clean Salvation Army in the Bronx.

Some possessions are in such sorry condition that not only do we not want them, but we strongly suspect no one else would. These possessions are thrown away.

There is a small collection of items that Jeremy sets aside to sell. These are vinyl records and CDs that he no longer likes. He goes to record stores and sells them, then recycles the money to buy new music that he does like.

Then there are the things we've decided to keep.

This is a special group of items. Jeremy and I are generally on the same page about this. He's a little more loosey-goosey about it, and I'm more decisive and ruthless. But we do meet in the middle.

The wonderful part about all of this is that all of the possessions we are keeping will have a beautiful place to go. Books. An enormous collection of CDs. Things that speak to each of our children at this point in their lives. Things we use on a regular basis. Things I'm re-discovering. Things we treasure.

There are also things that we don't treasure exactly but we need to save for tax purposes or whatnot. That stuff will go neatly in the closet.

I made a decision early on in our packing process and am happy I did. It's turned into a mantra.

No Scary Boxes. This is not something we are hoping to accomplish. It is more than that. It is a packing lifestyle.

No Scary Boxes means a number of things. When Jeremy and I started packing possessions we wanted to do so in an organized fashion. Naturally, there is a binder devoted to the packed possessions.

Every box of packed possessions is numbered, which correlates to a special list that tells us what items are in the box. In addition, I've developed a three level system that ranks the box by urgency. A red dot means that we need to unpack this box ASAP. A green dot box gets unpacked after the red dot boxes are unpacked. The yellow dot boxes are the least urgent.

The yellow dot boxes contain things like beautiful art books. No one needs a book about Cezanne or artisans in Brooklyn. No one is having a Raymond Carver emergency.

The yellow dot boxes may be the least urgent but the most fun.

I would like to mention that there is a clear plastic pencil case inside of the binder of boxed possessions that holds post it notes, ballpoint pens and Sharpies.

Jeremy and I got a storage unit at a new facility in the neighborhood. This is where we bring our boxes of packed possessions. One of the ways Jeremy upholds the No Scary Boxes lifestyle is by keeping our storage unit really neat and organized. This is not the type of storage unit where you unlock it and a shoe falls on your head.

There are the No Scary Boxes things we are doing now, and the No Scary Boxes things we will do in the future. We are not going to be bringing all of the boxes back to our apartment at once, after the paint job is complete, the carpet installed and the furniture in place. We will not be bringing them back in a willy-nilly, random fashion.

It will be more like this. What do you want to unpack today? Should we unpack the cookbooks? Okay, let's bring back boxes 10 through 12 and number 55. Then another day, it will be boxes 90 - 100. And so on.

We have an eye toward our future experience when we embrace No Scary Boxes. We have enough on our plates. We don't need to be unpacking any box with a sense of dread. Dread that comes from not liking what's in there, but being unable to let go. Dread that comes from having packed something that feels unmanageable. Dread that comes from simply putting things in a box and deferring the decision making process by procrastination. Dread that comes from a random and disparate collection of items that don't have a home. Dread that comes from a guilty place.

Some boxes are straight forward and never had the potential to become scary anyway. Boxes of alphabetized music. Boxes of files that can go into deep storage, and boxes of files still active. A box of special children's books we want to save.

But there's another box that could have been scary but isn't. This box contains my children’s baby books and loose photographs of Hannah and Noah. The baby books are all partially filled out. The photographs in this box are not in albums.

If you asked me what kind of mom I would turn out to be early in motherhood, I would have predicted that I’d be the kind of mom who would fill out the baby books all the way. I also would have predicted that I’d be the kind of mom that would put photographs of my children in albums.

Indeed, I was this kind of mom. My prediction turned out to be correct – in the beginning.

When Jacob was born I filled out the baby book I received for my shower. I painstakingly recorded every milestone. This baby book extends until the age of three. Jacob died when he was two and a half.  So I have this unfinished baby book.

Jeremy and I chose beautiful baby books for Hannah and Noah. Even though these children are healthy and just kept growing and growing, the baby book notations stopped before the end of the books.

The photo albums took a similar course. Until Noah was about three the albums are populated with beautifully organized photographs, complete with captions. Then that stopped too.

We continued to take photographs of the children. We continued to make note of their milestones. I continued to be interested in being the kind of mom who finishes baby books and photo albums. I especially enjoy captioning.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I became busy with the stuff that all moms get busy with as well as some less commonplace stuff. If you are just joining me now, I wear and have worn a lot of hats.

The truth is that I could have made time to fill out the books and fill the photo albums. At each opportunity, I chose to do something else instead. I chose to chaperone a whole bunch of field trips, when my children were young. I chose to be available at the drop of a hat for them to confide in me as they got older.

I chose to be outside at the playground when my son desperately needed to run around, and a source of company for my daughter when it was time for her to choose high school art supplies. She was capable of doing this on her own, but didn’t want to. So we made it a fun outing.

At the end of a long day, I chose to read a magazine while drinking a glass of wine after my kids were in bed. Now that they are older, I choose to watch TV shows we all enjoy. I take care of myself so I can get up to do it all over again with a smile.

When I packed the box of unfinished baby books and unsorted photos, I remembered all of the important things I was able to sort out. I saw my parental accomplishments splayed out and clear. Suddenly, I didn’t feel badly about my unfinished projects.

I reverently put the envelopes, books, and empty photo albums in the box. I labeled it with a sense of respect. Now that they’re out of my apartment, I have all kinds of ideas for the pictures I didn’t have before. I have been able to change course when necessary and this box is no exception. That’s the kind of mom I am.

Our storage unit piled with non-scary boxes

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The Soft Closet

Hannah was a toddler. Noah was a baby. Our firstborn, Jacob, had died not long ago.

Jeremy and I were volunteers. We helped other families who had been through a brain tumor diagnosis. Jeremy changed careers. I took over some of the freelance work he had been doing before switching careers.

9/11 happened. The photography industry continued to implode.

We were out in the world with two healthy children. We made new friends with people who had kids the same ages as ours. We lived rich, child -centric, work -centric and ambitious lives.

It wasn't always easy. It was frequently difficult. I'll say one thing. Our lives were never boring.

We were really busy.

We kept up with the laundry. I should say we kept up with the sorting, washing and drying of the laundry. What we weren't keeping up with was folding it and putting it away.

Just like always, the hamper in the bathroom and one additional laundry bag was filled with dirty laundry. But we also had another laundry bag of clean laundry. When we were less busy, naturally, we folded our clean laundry and put it away in the drawers. However, at this time, that situation had taken a turn.

We spent a lot of time in our living room playing with the kids. The bag of clean laundry was always in there too, propped up against the couch or the changing table.

Sometimes when it was time for us to get dressed, we would still find what we wanted in our drawers. Same with the kids's clothes. But most of the time we would rifle in the clean bag of laundry. You'd stick your hand in and feel around for underwear and piece together an outfit from there. The socks would be challenging. That could take a couple of tries.

We would do the same thing when it was time to dress the kids or re-pack the diaper bag.

Really, it wasn't bad. Because we were doing the laundry frequently, chances are you'd find your favorites in there. Yours and of course, the cutest, high rotation clothes for the kids.

Jeremy started calling the laundry bag of clean clothes, which had become a semi permanent installation, the soft closet.  It was an apt name and it stuck.

Have you seen my jeans? I just saw them in the soft closet.

I'm out of underwear. There's a whole bunch in the soft closet.

Hey! I just found this tee shirt in the soft closet. Do you want to wear it?

Eventually, our laundry situation was more under control. We became better at time management. The kids went from toddlerhood to pre-school where we exchanged one set of challenges for others. More often than not, the laundry got folded and put away. To be honest, this happens to be one of my favorite household chores.

Everything, smoothed, folded and in its place. Tee shirts crisp and stacked. Noah's school chinos clipped to hangers. An organized, orderly life. I'm living a little piece of that dream. I fold up the laundry bag and put it in the basket for next time.

Old Friends

Jeremy and I are engaged in an apartment renovation. If you keep on reading my blog, you're going to learn a lot about this project. You are going to see before and after pictures. You are going to hear about instant successes and unfortunate roadblocks.

At this moment, Jeremy and I are busy going through our possessions. We are throwing some things away. We are giving some things away. We are keeping some things. We are carefully packing up the stuff we are keeping in an organized fashion and bringing most of it to a storage unit. That is because we want to make room for the electrician, painters, builders and apartment renovation consultant to do their jobs.

Once our apartment has a cohesive color scheme, beautiful shelving and reflects our current lifestyle, we will bring everything back. We will put books and CDs and sculptures and treasured items in their rightful place. Right now, it looks like the rightful places will be a combination of built-ins, IKEA hacked creations and repurposed existing furniture. When I have more information, I'll let you know.

This was part of a series I shot for
Brides Magazine in 1989.
Each photograph represented
a different china pattern.

There are situations where I predict what will happen and that prediction turns out to be very accurate. I like to think I'm perceptive and reflective. So a lot of times, my predictions play out very much like I think they will.

Then there are the other times.

I recently unearthed a box full of my old photography work. I was a commercial still life photographer from 1988 until 2002. Then I stopped being a photographer. Someday, I will write about what it was like to be a photographer and then not be a photographer.  I'm not ready to do it now.

I approached this box with some trepidation. I made a prediction about how I would feel going through the box. I got myself ready to have an unpleasant experience. I felt that something was being exhumed and was going to be looking at items that were dead and buried. Stuff I hadn't looked at it a long time. I expected to see a bunch of crappy, dated work. I'd look through a few pieces and then throw the lot of it away.

1991 was off to an amazing start
with a once in a lifetime opportunity-
a creative collaboration with
Carbone Smolan Associates!
I mailed the resulting calendar to
my favorite editors and designers.
The rest was history.

The reality of it couldn't be further from my prediction. The reality took my breath away.

This wasn't a photography graveyard. It was a captivating treasure chest, perfectly saved, lovingly organized and exquisite. I was overcome.

The box I happened upon contained the artifacts of a photography career. It took place before digital technology, the Internet or social media. It was like going to a natural history museum and seeing a prehistoric fern perfectly preserved in amber.

There were C-prints, beautifully crafted. I remembered myself as a master printer and I saw that my memory served me well.

I fell in love with the young version of myself, who doggedly employed the same 35mm camera that I used in high school, the same camera that my stepfather paid for half of once I'd saved up enough babysitting and birthday money to pay for the other half.

I learned a lot about healthy eating
from photography assignments.
This one was for an article about
B vitamin sources for Health Magazine.

I used that camera to launch my career and no one could believe the images were not of a larger format. Much the same way I use my iPhone camera now.

Many of the images were timeless. Some were prophetic of what would later be. That surprised me. It floored me that photographs of fine china and expensive shoes had so much in common compositionally to the pictures I take now of trash on the sidewalk and fruits in situ at the farmers market.

Some photographs of globes and maps that I shot for a lavish annual report, in the days when annual reports were lavish, looked disarmingly like the collages I make for this blog.

I found that's quarter century of time and life experience had changed me less than I thought.

I've loved pasta all my life.
Naturally, I was excited to shoot
a layout for Food & Wine
elevating my favorite food
with my artistic style.

Sure there were some dated pieces. They were funny and sweet and in another 10 years will be worthy of a vintage new life. The pragmatist kept an example of what was good and threw the rest away. The occasional results of a bad day, a bad client or a bad subject were tossed.

I began handling the prints with reverence and attention. The dots were connecting. This dot connecting turned into a very good thing. I'd been prepared to slog through this box with gritted teeth and determination. What I found was whimsy and beauty and color and fun. What I found was something to take care of.

I hadn't been a fool. I wasn't one now either. As organizing sessions go, this one was pretty awesome.

There was no social media or even email in the late 80's and early

90's. I worked hard to make sure my snail mail promotional

pieces stood out from the rest.