“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” ~ Thomas Edison
Little Miss Muse and I stand in the near-empty spare bedroom. Her stilettos echo off the hardwood floor. Empty boxes and totes litter the hallway outside the room. Some have their tops. Some lids sprouted wings and flew to that place where mismatched Tupperware goes to die.
There’s one tote left in the room. It was here long before the events of the last sixteen months buried it.
“Now what?” she asks with her hands resting on the tutu that barely covers her chonky hips.
“I don’t know.”
“That was a lot of stuff. I’ve never had that much stuff, and I’m like, ancient years old.” She pops a grape-flavored bubble and stomps around some more, enjoying the racket her shoes make.
“Yes, it was.” I run my hands down my face.
Stuff from my mom-in-law. My aunt. Stuff from my mom. Stuff from their houses that belonged to their in-laws and moms and aunts. Generations of… stuff. And it all ended up in my house. The garage. Shed.
And piles and piles landed here in my spare room.
Until it was… gone. Gifted. Donated. Sold.
And I’m left with this one tote. And a bone-deep tiredness.
The Great Purge took quite a bit of mental bandwidth. I’m not sure what to do with myself now in this echoing room.
Little Miss sits atop the lone tote and swings her legs against the plastic sides, and picks at her flaking purple nail polish. “Well, no rush, but I have some ideas.”
Sometimes her ideas wear me out faster than purging estates. “I’m sure you do.”
She pats the lid. “You know the lists you found when you cleaned the office last week?”
“You mean the physical manifestations of the junk pile in my brain?”
She brightens. “Yeah. All those pretty Post-Its in every color. Printed out stuff. Handwritten stuff—”
As she rattles on, my anxiety inches up, fueled by all the wayside plans and unfinished projects sitting on my desk.
And she’s sitting on that tote.
I know what she wants me to do. I know what I need to do.
I pop the lid off. I haven't opened this since the week before Mom passed.
I was attending an author signing at our local booksore that spring—one of several I’d planned for the year. Mom and I were to have breakfast that morning before the signing, but Mom overslept and the day took us in different directions. Had either of us known what was in store…
But we don’t get the gift of foresight.
And hindsight can be a beast.
Add to that how my brain gifts me vivid memory recall and uncanny visceral connections to the most innocuous of totes.
Deep breath.
The tote holds a black tablecloth, clear acrylic book stands, business cards, and bookmarks branded with B.A. Paul. My color-changing pencils that go from purple to pink with the heat of your hand. People get a kick out of those, and anyone passing by my table is welcome to take that little bit of playfulness with them.
Little Miss comes up behind me, a steady little hand on my shoulder. Her wing brushes my face. “I have some ideas,” she says softly.
I know she does. I do, too, but I’ve not let myself think too much past blog posts and really, really rough drafts of late.
I take stock of the supplies and put them back in the tote, securing the lid so it doesn’t fly to the Tupperware Tomb.
Little Miss and I head to the office to that colorful stack of brain dumps next to my keyboard. I thumb through the notes and plans and begin sorting them by the bandwidth required to bring them from the realm of “if only” into the tangible world.
“It’s quite the junk pile,” I say.
“We have quite the imagination,” she says, using a grape-gum-covered finger to pick up a small, bright pink Post-It and slide it to the top of the column.
In purple ink, I’d scribbled out a spark of a short story idea, who knows how many moons ago.
“That one?” I ask, not quite trusting myself to decide which of this hoard of papers to tackle first. The pile mirrors the hoard of totes that used to be in the spare room just days ago.
“That one,” she confirms with a grin and swipes the rest of the papers into a newly organized heap. “We’ll invent something fabulous out of all this junk.”
I open a blank Word document.
She opens her lavender glitter.
And we let imagination take over…
