The Attic

I've been spending a lot of time the past few weeks doing some remodeling/reorganizing around my house. The plans is to a rearrange the current living situation (which is pretty odd, but that's another story..) to allow my mother to rent out the second floor of the house.

Seems pretty reasonable.

Part of this process includes cleaning out my attic...which I tackled this weekend.

My attic has long been a place of mystery. As a child I remember it being a monumental occasion when my father would allow me to come up into the attic with him, usually, this was around Christmas so that we could retrieve the boxes filled with decorations.

The low ceiling, musty air, and insulation that looked like cotton candy provided the environment where the Christmas decorations and forgotten household items went to disappear from view.

I always thought there was something hidden up there. Some sort of forgotten family treasure. Instead I found 25 years of forgotten items.

It was sort of sad finding all of these things that had been exiled from use. Banished to the black hole that is the attic. It was the most literal account of the saying "out of sight, out of mind" that I have encountered. In the boxes and bags of things I saw my child flash in front of me. I saw a lifetime of changes and family issues that rather than being sorted out were boxed up and put in the attic.

The attic.

Sometimes I would hear noises from up there and think that maybe there were squirrels or birds up there, but after a spending a weekend moving things around up there and clearing out the place I saw no sign of there being anything living up there.

Perhaps those noises I heard were the boxes of forgotten objects longing for attention.