42.

NEVER, EVER DO WHAT I SAY

Top of the fifth with no outs, a man on first and the pitch is wide and outside . . .” Baseball. Soundtrack of my dad. I’m sitting on the couch in Florida with him, watching a game. The happy, homey whir of the KitchenAid mixer starts up in the background. My ninety-year-old mom is baking, something she hasn’t done in years!

This is exactly what I should be doing, I know that now. Just being here with them. Not meddling in my parents’ life for once. Not micromanaging like I did on earlier visits. No TiVo. No trying to convince them they wouldn’t feel “so overwhelmed with stuff” if they’d just let me help them get rid of some stuff.

There’s comfort in their stuff, I appreciate that now. There’s security in the basket of Christmas cards that’s still in their living room every June, waiting for addresses to be double-checked in the address book, in the pile of magazines “we might still need to clip something out of to send to someone” on their kitchen counter. In their tidy stacks of scrap paper made from the unwritten-upon parts of stationery they cut off and saved. They were raised in a time and a culture that taught them not to waste, so they use the backs of every piece of paper, keep little stashes of “perfectly good” used rubber bands, twist ties, and rinsed-out Baggies. The care they take to “save things for later” implies there will be a “later,” and it’s deeply, sweetly reassuring.

I have no agenda left except to completely surrender to their system and honor the rules of their home. It’s been unbelievably peaceful here so far, which is probably what inspired Mom to bake today after all these years. Nothing, not even the future of one old paper clip, is being threatened by me on this visit.

“Two strikes, one ball, with a man on second and one out . . .” comes the announcer from the TV set. The whir of the KitchenAid . . . Happy, homey, relaxed, perfect.

Dad’s loving this too, I can tell. He turns his head toward the sound of the mixer. “Mother’s at it again!” he proclaims with a grin.

“What do you suppose she’s making for us?” I ask, feeling as giddy as a five-year-old, pretty sure it will be those fudge bars Mom knows I love so much. I snuggle into my childhood. Smooth my hand on the familiar fabric next to me. Along with all the used envelopes, old catalogs, and twist ties, they never got rid of their couch. I’m sitting on the same couch next to the same table next to the same lamp that’s been in their living room my whole life. The paintings my sister did in high school are still on the wall. The coasters Mom and Dad brought home from their honeymoon in Niagara Falls sixty-five years ago are still on the coffee table. By hanging on to everything forever, my careful, frugal parents have kept our family’s sweet, safe nest perfectly intact.

“Oh, Mom’s not baking.” Dad laughs. “She’s shredding!”

Chocolate? Coconut? “I didn’t know you could shred with a mixer!” I laugh happily.

“That’s not the mixer.” Dad beams. “That’s our new document shredder!”

It takes more than a moment to register, but when it does, my happy laugh is over.

“Document shredder??” I repeat.

“Yes!” Dad says proudly. “We finally picked one up last week and have been going to town!”

My happy laugh is definitely over. My surrender’s over. My micromanaging moratorium is over.

“Stop her!” I yell, jumping to my feet. “Stop her before it’s too late!” I charge down the hall into Mom and Dad’s home office and throw my body between my mother and the nice new piece of equipment she and Dad bought without my permission.

“Surprise!” Mom exclaims, trying to reach past me with a handful of papers. “I’m doing what you’ve been telling us to do for months!”

“Stop, Mom!! What’s—in—your—hand??” I stammer, reaching for the papers, trying to not sound as panicked as I sound.

“Oh, these are just some old college things,” Mom says, dodging my reach and aiming for the slot in the top of the shredder. “Out they go!”

“NO!” I say, snatching the papers before the shredder does. “You can’t throw these out!”

“Ancient history!” Mom proclaims. “Who needs them?”

“I do! It’s your history!” I look at the yellowed page on top, a college newspaper article with my mother’s maiden name in the byline. “You wrote these!” I say, clutching the papers to me.

“For heaven’s sake,” Mom says, reaching toward a tall stack on her desk, “you were right! It’s time to unload all this stuff!”

“What stuff??” I ask, horrified. My eyes do a speed scan of the room, searching for familiar piles. I drop to the floor and peer through the little plastic window on the front of the shredder. The shredder is half full. “What have you already shredded??”

“Just some old bills, bank statements, calendars . . .” Mom shakes her head with a laugh.

“Family calendars??” I choke. “You shredded family calendars??”

“Oh, I’ve barely gotten started on those!” Mom says.

I yank the top off the shredder, reach in and pull out a handful of shreds.

“We had them going back to 1955!” she adds.

I spread the shreds on the floor, try to match any minuscule scrap with any other. “Nineteen . . . no . . . here’s . . . no . . . These pieces are so tiny! I’ll never get them stuck back together!”

“You most certainly won’t!” Mom says proudly. “Your father was afraid someone would go through our recycling bin and try to piece together our old electric bills, so we got the micro cross cut shredder! Burglar proof!”

“What else have you been shredding??” I ask helplessly, the teensy pieces of our beloved family history running through my fingers like confetti.

“All kinds of things! Old medical records! Letters! Pictures of people we don’t recognize!”

“You haven’t thrown out a rubber band in fifty years and you shredded letters and pictures??”

“We finally listened to you! Ta-da!” she says, opening a file drawer next to where I’m sitting on the floor, a drawer that used to be packed too tightly to add even one paper and is now almost empty.

“What was in there, Mom??” I peer in and ask, even more helplessly.

“Who knows? It’s gone now! It feels wonderful to unload some of this stuff!”

I look up from the file drawer, which is nine tenths empty, at my beautiful mother, whose life is nine tenths over. “Please don’t unload anything else, Mom.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” She shakes her head. “We don’t want to leave this mess for your sisters and you! Who’s going to go through all this useless stuff when we’re gone?”

“My sisters and I are!” I say. “We want all your useless stuff!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mom shakes her head. “You’ve been trying to get us to do this for years and you were right!”

“NO! I was not right! And besides, I didn’t mean this! I meant you should part with an old envelope now and then . . . throw out a used Post-it Note . . . not this! Don’t ever listen to me, Mom! Never, ever do what I say!!”

“I’ll get the vacuum cleaner,” she says with a chuckle and nod to the pile of shreds in front of me as she walks out of the room.

I crawl right through the shreds to Mom’s desk, rise to my feet, grab her desk phone, dial Staples, and start screaming before the poor receptionist knows what hit her.

“YOUR DOCUMENT SHREDDERS SHOULD HAVE PARENTAL WARNING LABELS!” I yell into the big plastic receiver. “GREAT BIG ‘DO NOT SELL TO ANYONE’S PARENTS!’ STICKERS! NO ONE OVER THE AGE OF EIGHTY CAN BE TRUSTED! THEY MIGHT START LISTENING TO THEIR CHILDREN AND WILL NOT USE GOOD JUDGMENT! NOT MAKE GOOD CHOICES! IN THE NAME OF PERSONAL SECURITY AND IDENTITY PROTECTION, YOU ARE WIPING OUT THE IDENTITIES OF ENTIRE FAMILIES! IT SHOULD BE AGAINST THE LAW TO SELL THIS MEMORY HATCHET TO SWEET, THOUGHTFUL, RESPONSIBLE PARENTS LIKE MINE WHO GET IN AN ‘UNLOADING’ MODE!”

The cool, professional voice on the other end of the phone has been trying to make herself heard since I began my tirade and is still going on and on, utterly unruffled by my outrage. She continues calmly, almost robotically, “For store hours, press 4; for billing, press 5; for corporate accounts, press 6; for all other inquiries visit our website at . . .”

I slam down the receiver without giving her the satisfaction of finishing her big rehearsed speech. Another thing that will be lost if people keep selling new gizmos to old people, I think. The feel and sound of a receiver smashing down on its base. The wimpy click of ending a cell phone call is utterly ungratifying for the hanger-upper, and delivers absolutely no message to the hanger-upee. Only by throwing a cell phone at a wall as hard as possible can a person get anything close to that great old sound and feeling of a phone being smashed off, but as happy a moment as that is, I’ve learned, it isn’t really worth the replacement cost.

I make a mental note to add “Launch a movement to bring back less expensive and more gratifying ways to hang up on people” to my to-do list. But that’s for later. For today, I need to rescue all the beautiful pieces of Mom’s and Dad’s lives they haven’t managed to shred yet. Now that it’s all been threatened, every single scrap of paper in their house seems special.

The grocery lists written on the backs of car insurance envelopes . . .

The paper bank statements, still checked off by hand against paper copies of written checks . . .

The copies of the copies of the copies of travel plans Dad makes to be sure he remembers to quadruple check everyone’s reservations and which he hangs on to years after the trips are done just to review and reverify that it all happened as planned . . .

The rough drafts of notes written by Mom in the lovely cursive longhand they used to teach in school. My mom, who would have been a famous writer if she’d lived in a different century and had a chance for self-expression—all that talent and possibility channeled into beautiful notes to friends and family members, written as eloquently and thoughtfully as a poem . . .

The address book with names and birthdays carefully recorded, deaths gently and respectfully noted in light pencil, not the brutal electronic delete, which is how dear friends disappear from address lists now . . .

The basket of handwritten, pancake-batter-stained recipes Mom has thankfully never gotten computer literate enough to type into a nice clean legible impersonal computer file . . .

The worn file folders full of the roasts, toasts, and songs Dad wrote for decades of birthdays and anniversaries and retirement parties . . .

The old files of credit card receipts—who Mom and Dad are right now, where they went last year, what they needed at Walgreens in 1983 . . .

I can’t leave them alone with their things anymore, I think. Can’t trust them to not try to clean their desks.

I will have to move in and plant myself outside their home office door like a security guard! Install a camera that sets off an alarm in California if a piece of paper nears the trash in Florida so I can supervise from three thousand miles away! Buy boxes, pack up their whole house, and ship it to my house so they can’t get rid of anything else!

I’m back in full micromanaging mode. Hyper-hoverer. I need to watch over them and guard every little scrap of them in this house and do the same for my daughter and make sense of all the little scraps of my own life. The job is suddenly, completely overwhelming. I need my mom and dad, I think. I need them now.

I yank the shredder’s cord from the wall, wrap it in a rubber band from Mom’s ancient rubber band collection, and stuff the shredder behind one of the desks. I hurry to the living room, sit back down next to Dad, and lean my head on his shoulder, lean right back into being five years old.

“. . . the crowd is going wild after that last unbelievable catch deep in center field. Two outs and the tying run is at third . . .” I hear Mom fussing with something or other in the kitchen. I pat the familiar couch, breathe the familiar air, look around the familiar room. My eyes land on one tiny shred that got stuck to the knee of my jeans. I lift it off, squint to try to make out any letter or number that might match any of the 500,000 other little shreds I will be rescuing from the vacuum cleaner bag later. I tuck the shred in my pocket for safekeeping. Nothing’s leaving this happy house today. Not on my watch.