I am sitting at the kitchen table right now. It’s twilight. The morning sun is just beginning to take a peek at my neck of the woods. The coffee is hot.

I am thinking about my stuff.

The “stuff” of my life comes to mind because I can see stuff behind the glass doors of the hutch that sits against the wall across from me. I didn’t buy this stuff. I inherited it from Beth, who bought some of it and who also inherited some of it from her mother’s collection of stuff.

Most of the stuff in my hutch is crystal. I imagine some of it is real and therefore valuable to somebody. Some of it probably came from the department store and is therefore about as valuable as a worn-out shoe. I honestly have no idea.

What hits me is this. How have I not noticed this stuff before now?

After Beth died, I made it my mission to sort through all the stuff of our 43 years together. It was just something I had to do, and so I got rid of a lot of Beth’s old stuff. It’s just part of the process. I have given to the kids what they wanted. I have donated stuff to the thrift store. I have hauled stuff away. I have tucked a few things up in the attic for another day.

But here, in plain sight, is a collection of stuff which I don’t need.

I can’t remember the last time I needed a crystal punch bowl, or a crystal pedestal dish, or a crystal platter, or a crystal pitcher, or a crystal thing-a-ma-bob. It looks like maybe a beer mug made for Paul Bunyon.

My Lord, what do I do with this stuff?

I could stare at these crystal dishes for the next 20 years. They’re not really bothering anybody. Just sitting there. Undisturbed. The collection is not even dusty, because it lives behind closed doors that have not been opened in I-don’t-know-how-long.

If I leave it alone, the kids can deal with it. That’s what most of us end up doing with our stuff. You know it’s true. We vow we’re not gonna do that, but in the end, the kids get your stuff. Even your useless stuff.

After Mom and Dad passed, my sister and I did the duty of every child. We went through their stuff. I now understand why there were Christmas decorations from 1965 still in the attic. They hadn’t been touched for over forty-five years.

You’ve been there. You go up into the attic and you see your stuff. You think about getting rid of some of it. But then, it’s outta the way and not really an issue since it’s up in the attic outta sight. It’s not bothering anybody.

So, you say to yourself, “Naw. I’ll deal with that later.”

Later comes and you’re dead. Gone from this world. And your stuff is still here. Some of it hangs around for sentimental reasons. But in the big picture, most of it is just stuff that won’t matter a hundred years from now.

I have bought a lot of stuff in the last year that didn’t come from the store. I am like a squirrel when it comes to stuff. I gather. I bring some back to the nest. I bury some for later use. Sometimes I forget where I buried it. And by the time I discover it again, I wonder where it came from and why.

Just last Saturday afternoon, Marion and I drove an hour or so north specifically to dig through another man’s stuff, in order to see if we might want to turn some of his stuff into our stuff.

The son called me. “We’re going through Dad’s stuff and knowing you do some wood working, we thought you might want to go through his stuff.”

This is why Marion and I both drive trucks. They hold more stuff.

You never know what you’re getting into when you go blindly into a situation. Sight unseen. It was just a one car garage, but boy was he efficient at making room for his stuff. Not many boxes, but lots of drawers. Tiny plastic drawers. Metal cabinet drawers. Homemade wooden drawers. Open drawers sitting on shelves. Drawers behind closed doors. Drawers stacked and sitting on the floor.

I heard the son say something I’ve heard a bazillion times from others when we’re digging through “dad’s” stuff.

“He could fix about anything, and if he didn’t have it, he’d just make it from the scraps he had.”

This seems to apply to anything from a pencil box to a rocket ship.

Dads with shops are the Leonardo DaVinci’s of lawn mowers and Frigidaires. They repair broken windows with glass they saved from 1972. They look at a busted well pump and just seem to know what to do. To shop-dads everywhere, a silent and lifeless water heater is no reason to despair. His boxes and drawers hold the breath from which he will resurrect a useless phoenix from the ashes without ever making a trip to the hardware store.

I didn’t bring home much the other day. I did buy more bar-clamps. I can’t help myself. And now I’ll have to revamp my rack or build another rack to store my new stuff.

My perspective! It’s not really “clutter” if it’s useful stuff.

This is how I justify my continuing search for the perfect what-cha-ma-call-it. I don’t know what that might be, but when I see it, I’ll know. And when I know, I’ll load it up and bring it home.

I can tell you, however, that my perfect what-cha-ma-call-it is not crystal. I have never been tempted, even a little bit, to buy someone else’s crystal. Which still leaves me with the dilemma of the contents of my hutch.

Now that I have seen it, I cannot unsee it. It reminds me that I have a new life now and the old life is gone. I remember the old. I have many treasured memories. But I live with a new heart and in a new time. And the more stuff I have from my past the more difficult it is to make room for the new.

I know what will happen if I don’t get rid of it. My kids will divvy it up, afraid to toss any of it out of respect for me.

“Papa kept it,” they’ll say. “This crystal must have been important to him. We can’t throw it away.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is, I never cared for the crystal dishes at all. I remember thinking, when Beth and Alice were going through their mama’s collection, “Why do we need this stuff? We’ll never use it. But it was her stuff, no different than my pipe clamps.”

We did use one of the cake platters on occasion. Other than that, they have remained up on glass shelves behind glass doors.

A word to my kids. When I’m gone, keep a few things in one shoebox. That’s enough.

Trust me. You don’t need more stuff.