2006 Recollected in Tranquility

What did I do in 2006 with my life's energy and time?

Visits with my daughter

January 14-16
My precious daughter Juanita visited me the weekend of January 14-16 for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. She arrived at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday evening the 14th. I fixed her Aero bed in the living room. We sat together for a while as she shared her experiences of going to The Duvet Club in NYC with her friend Gina and Gina's counsin, Sharon. She said the lines to the club were 2 blocks long and there was a VIP list and a generic list and once inside there was some incident with the bartender which I don't recall but maybe Juanita will. On Sunday the 15th we enjoyed breakfast of strawberry pancakes and fresh strawberries. We attended Unity North's church service and Juanita met Donna Pendarvis and Jennifer of Jennifer Unlimited, both on the Team Azim. After service, we watched a football game--Juanita's "boys" the Pittsburg Steelers v. the Indianapolis Colts (21-18) and Juanita tried to help me understand what a "blitz" was as well as other football terms like "off sides," "sack," "interception," and "pass interference." I took her out for dinner at Fleming's Steakhouse in the new Stony Point Shopping Center where Juanita enjoyed some good wine. Then we visited Robert and Nedra at 7:30 p.m. Nedra gave me some body lotions.

March 21 - I spent my 61st birthday weekend with Juanita in New Jersey.

Juanita spent the last days in May in Miami, Florida with some of her girlfriends. She flew the very next week to Jamaica to attend the funeral of one of Tonio's relatives. Tonio's birthday is June 8th. On July 19th Tonio had his appointment with the Jamaican Embassy for a tourist visa which was denied because he was engaged to Juanita and they told him Juanita would have to file a finance visa for him.

May 13th -14th- Juanita visited me for Mother's Day weekend.

December 23-26 - Christmas. Spent with Juanita and her Dad and my niece, Rebecca Hengstenberg, 2nd yr. law student at Georgetown.

Civic -
I had joined Team Azim in late 2005 at the request of Reverend Joyce of Unity Christ Church of Bon Air where I am a member and spent a lot of time working on that project, preparing newsletters and public service announcements, creating a database of invitees from the City and surrounding counties as well as the criminal bar, coordinating distribution of the newsletter with Margaret at VICPP (Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy). The Team Azim program for the public was held Thursday evening, March 16th, in Coburn Hall at Virginia Union University. Azim Khamisa and Ples Felix spoke about their extraordinary relationship as a result of the murder of Azim's son by Ples' grandson.

I assisted Brian Buniva, an environmental attorney, in organizing a group of legal folks to meet on July 13th in the Hunton & Williams Conference Room on the 20th Floor of our building where Azim and Ed Sparks spoke about the CANEI program which targets youth and gang violence.
filled 4 shoe boxes and delivered to Joyce Crostic for RLSA's Christmas project to ship to children throughout the world; supported local film maker, Lucas Krost, who won a $100,000 prize for entering a film contest; purchased a flight jacked at A&N for a child for Christmas.

Financial - I got my taxes filed on time--by Monday, April 17th.

Health - Inspired by Juanita who has lost all her weight, I joined Weight Watchers in May and lost 11 pounds before I gave up.

House - In June Kelleher Plumbing began to fix the plumbing at the house. I took off that Monday while they were working. I got the house power washed on November 15th before winter set in.

Personal Enrichment
I attended art receptions.

I drove to the Hampton Rds. Convention Center (exit 263) for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival. I met B. J. and her friend Betty for lunch there and looked at all the prize-winning quilts.

I took a drawing class at VCU. We met in Cabell Library in the evenings in April and May. I discovered I can't draw worth a hoot.

Music - I heard the One Voice Chorus performance at Westminster Presbyterian in March.
I bought a Werlitzer piano at the auction but it needs to be tuned.

I enjoyed seeing a few plays--one by the Chamberlayne Actors Theatre titled "Epic Proportions" which is a biblical comedy.

In June I discovered a new hobby--beading--and took my first class at a Ben Franklin Crafts & Frames store.

In September, I attended my first session of the Virginia Laughter Lovers Club at the home of Indu and Vishwa Bhargava, 1702 Tunbridge Drive, 23238 tel: 804.740.5529. We were taped by a news reporter from Hampton Roads and our session was aired on the Internet.

Professional Development

On May 22nd I spoke at Hermitage High School in the English classes for their Career Day. Carrie Simmons from my church who is the IT coordinator there had invited me.

At the law firm, I coordinated a professional development seminar on excellent customer service and got a good speaker. I travelled to our Norfolk Office to host the seminar there.
In July I spoke to college students at Bryant &Stratton business college on the legal assistant career in the 21st century at the invitation of Vivian Batts, the paralegal coordinator there.

In August I participated in a professional development seminar at work on "That Elusive Work-Life Balance." I wrote articles for the newsletter.

I applied for the Leadership Metro Richmond class of 2007 but did not make the list. An attorney in my law firm did and I was happy for him.

I attended RLSA meetings.

On August 31st, I began working for the CEO of LeClair Ryan, Gary D. LeClair, as his assistant had been fired.

I assisted in getting together a program for the firm's Diversity Feast which we held on November 9th (Thursday) - our special guest speaker was Lt. Col. Howard Baugh, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen, who is 86 years old now.

attended a Dale Carnegie Course on relationships. Studied PowerPoint. FileSite.

Social -
I paid for Margie, B. J. and Janice to join me at Swift Creek Theatre for dinner and play, "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change." We split our sides laughing. Great play!

In October I enjoyed attending the National Folk Festival. I volunteered to be an usher at the Firehouse Theatre. I got to see "The Secret of Mme. Bonnard's Bath."

I attended some Women of Unity meetings -- one at church, one at a local restaurant named Carraba's Italian Grill in the Chesterfield Towne Center.

Spirituality -
I attended "A Course in Miracles" lecture series with Vernon Sylvest, M.D. beginning January 12th and learned about solutions to seemingly impossible problems. I got to hear Dr. Sylvest speak on the "Power of Nonviolence" at a special Saturday a.m. program (Jan 21) sponsored by IONS.

February - I bought a lot of teddy bears to give to the police on Teddy Bear Sunday in February but missed getting them to the church in time. They're still in the trunk of my car.

I attended a prayer class in November led by Lois Fellows.
Films I saw: "An Inconvenient Truth" at UR's Modlin Camp Concert Hall.
"The Secret" at Unity South.
"Winter Grace" program at St. Paul's in November w/Nancy Milner, LCSW, who showed films about growing old -- one was about Ram Dass.

Family of Origin:
I sent my sister some birthday gifts for her birthday on Feb. 15th.

Deaths: September 22 (Friday) - my cousin Dexter Bentley died olone in his house in North Carolina. The following Sunday I got a call from a Sheriff informing me of Dexter's death and asking for next of kin. I referred him to Mary, Dexter's ex-wife, because Dexter had 2 sons. I should have gotten Mary's phone number to make sure Dexter had a military funeral since he was a Vietnam Vet. I feel somehow guilty that I did not think to do this.

September 28 - Elias Abu-Saba died today. I didn't find out from Mary Edith until 2 weeks later. She had a memorial service for him on Sunday, Oct. 8th, at the UME Church in Almeda, CA. I had flowers placed in my church on Sunday Oct. 15th in memory of my friend Eunice and in memory of Elias.

December 9-12 --trip of forgiveness and reconciliation - - drove to South Carolina to visit my 92 year old mother and 66 year old brother in Simpsonville. Juanita travelled to Jamaica during this same time.

Christmas 2005 Remembered

On Christmas Eve I arrived in the Newark Airport for Christmas with Juanita and her father who were waiting for me. We drove straight from the Airport to Essex BMW on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair where Juanita picked up her new BMW. Across the street was a barbeque restaurant where Juanita enjoyed sish ka bobs and I had vegies and rice. David ordered ribs. After lunch we headed to Juanita's condo. Juanita and I stepped out to the Men's Warehouse so that I could shop for a gift for David -- a rust colored sweater. Next stop was K-Mart where Juanita picked up a TV video game for her father, then on to ShopRite in Lindhurst for last minute items for Christmas dinner -- I bought spoon bread and spiced peaches. Back at the Condo, Juanita and I decorated the tree with lights and gold beads, red ribbon and some of the ornaments I had given her years ago. Then we met David for midnight mass with a reception of champagne and hors d'oevre afterward. A tree in the reception hall was decorated with members' tags of thanksgiving. Juanita's tag read for Mom & Dad, life, health and wealth, friends & family, prosperity and spirituality and in the bulletin she had "in memory" of Eunice Wilson, Gainel and Walter Hanley and Willie and Girlean Shepperson.

Christmas Day Juanita and I spent wrapping gifts and cooking for her 4:00 p.m. dinner. Her dad brought a cajun turkey and rack of lamb. I served up the spiced peaches and spoonbread. Juanita had made mashed potatoes and snap green beans. For dessert we had vannilla ice cream and applie pie.

After dinner we picked up Juanita's friend Gina and her daughter Shanelle and drove in the rain to Ashbury Park to see the light show of the 12 days of Christmas and Santa's beach party.

The next day before Juanita and her Dad took me to the airport, there was a fire alarm in the building. It was soon discovered that there was a leak in Juanita's bathroom that had tripped the fire alarm. We had to leave the condo for the airport to make my flight on time before Juanita knew whether her condo was on fire. Once at the airport, I learned my flight had been delayed, and Juanita returned home to find her condo okay. What a frightening way to end a holiday!

Artifacts of An Unused Life

It is purported that in Dante's Inferno, which I vaguely recall having read when I was an undergrad, a circle of Hell was reserved for hoarders condemned to an eternity of rolling enormous boulders representing the possessions with which they had unhealthy relationships during their lives. In an article on conquering clutter, David Dudley, a writer, who assisted his elderly parents in downsizing to prepare for a move to a smaller home, described the process of decluttering as a kind of "desperate guerrila campaign against a faceless enemy that had insinuated itself into every device and nook."

For several years now, I have likewise been at war with this faceless enemy in what has often seemed a futile battle in spite of my many trips to Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Since I did not completely declutter my house last year, I'm carrying over my one self-improvement goal for 2007 to rid myself of the clutter I have accumulated over a lifetime. I'm giving away all of my quilting fabric and quilt books as a good way to start.

Until recently, I didn't understand the nature of the enemy I was fighting. I bought so many books on how to declutter that they became part of the clutter. I attended seminars by professional organizers on ways to clear the clutter. Still, I needed to know why I had a near compulsion to collect things and why it was so difficult to let them go when they were no longer of any use.

In the early 1990s, a Smith College psychologist, Randy Frost, Ph.D., conducted a research study on pack rats like me. A pioneer in the field of compulsive hoarding, which is the most severe form of cluttering behavior, he estimated as many as 4 million hoarders nationwide with many more having "problematic cluttering behavior." He set about to study the mind of a clutterer and discovered major manifestations such as collecting useless possessions, cluttering living spaces to the point they become uninhabitable, and distress or inability to function in the midst of all the stuff. Well, that helps to explain why I spent a whole weekend recently reading a book and working on craft projects. It's hard to look at all the clutter! Better to read a good book and enjoy some ice cream.

Frost's studies revealed that the "syndrome" tends to run in families and suggested a possible genetic factor might be involved. He also found that it spans all incomes and is not just a Western phenomenon but exists around the world. Though Frost speculated that adults exhibiting such behavior were responding to childhood poverty, his studies did not bear that out. Instead, he discovered a different underlying issue--emotional deprivation and lack of warmth expressed in the family during adolescence. That seemed to make sense. In an effort to maintain an illusion of safety and comfort not experienced in childhood, hoarders fill up their physical space with things thus creating living spaces that are anything but safe and comforting--household pathways that become narrow, exits that become blocked.

I have come to understand why the objects I have used the least are the hardest to get rid of. As Frost explains, they are not objects at all but are symbols of never-tapped potential, artifacts of an unused life, plans for future projects never to be completed. In letting those things go, I must be willing to grieve the loss of untapped potential and move on. How do you grieve over potential never developed? Who might I have become had I tapped that potential?

Hoarding has been described as an evolutionary urge lodged deep in our genes to collect everything we can lay our hands on. Certainly, the survival of the fittest once favored the fellow who had the largest collection of rocks and sticks, but as David Dudley maintains, such hoarding no longer serves us well in an era of unprecedented access to consumer goods.

One professional organizer describes clutterers as people with a lot of interests. Some are notorious compilers of paper clutter. Others like me have craft hobbies and have collected a large backlog of unrealistic projects, supplies and materials they hope to get to "someday." I have scrapbooking supplies, hundreds of photos I have yet to organize, books on how to write my autobiography still unwritten, a room full of quilting supplies and fabric, plus boxes I have yet to unpack from my move 2 years ago from my 2 bedroom apartment to the house my daughter inherited.

During the 1970s, my then husband and I had a legitimate reason for renting a self-storage unit --our apartment had burned down and we needed a place to store what we could salvage from our possessions that the firemen had dumped onto a tennis court behind our building. According to David Dudley, self-storage facilities which were rare in the '70s now number 45,000 nationwide and represent nearly 2 billion square feet of rentable space. He noted that a quarter of homeowners with 2-car garages use them solely for storage and park in the driveway. Hoarders who have a voracious appetite for acquiring stuff and a fierce attachment to it once it is acquired will spend a lot of money renting spaces to hold all their stuff, even though the investment in monthly upkeep is usually greater than the value of the contents themselves. I don't have a 2-car garage and I live in a one-bedroom house so I will continue my trips to Goodwill and the Salvation Army in 2007. Yes, I am "chronically disorganized" at home but not yet in need psychological intervention. Someone, please call the psychiatrist for me if you ever hear that I plan to rent a self-storage unit.

Happy New Year!