Sorting out the past

Folks, I'd like to introduce you to Uncle Biddley. That's him in the picture to the right. He of course is not my biological uncle. As you can probably see, he's a plastic toy. According to the legend, I got him in a McDonald's Happy Meal featuring Playmobil toys when I was not quite 2 years old, and for whatever reason, I started calling him Uncle Biddley. Somewhere, as I recall, there is a recording of me as a young child naming my uncles, and Uncle Biddley was on my list.

Last weekend, I had a little reunion with Uncle Biddley. We didn't have a lot of one-on-one time, because the weekend reunion also included hundreds of other toys, clothes, collector pins, watches, coloring books, shoelaces, novelty keepsakes and random pieces of paper. You see, my parents had lovingly invited me home to Green Bay to sort through the absolutely ridiculous amount of stuff I had amassed while growing up. They have a big re-carpeting and painting project on tap next month, and they only have so much room to store this stuff in the basement.

Throughout my life, I have been a saver. A keeper. A collector. A pack rat. An idiot. Whatever you want to call it. I have had an extraordinarily difficult time throwing things away, and because I was an only child with no competition for space, I didn't have to throw things away. And because my parents loved me a lot and hated to see me cry, they let me get away with it and joked that someday, someone would put it in The Andy Behrendt Museum. I got so attached to my toys and other belongings that I sometimes considered them friends — or, in extreme cases, relatives.

I pretty much kept on keeping until I met my wife, Tracy, who since then has become a museum curator and collections manager. Part of her job is to figure out which things in a given collection have a certain value and which things should be "deaccessioned" or thrown away. She is really good at this. And as it turned out, the curator of The Andy Behrendt Museum didn't have much interest in most of the collection. The frequent collision of the "keep it"/"throw it away" philosophies has caused some of the biggest arguments that Tracy and I have ever had. But over time, she has won me over to her side to a degree that my parents can't believe. I actually throw away some Happy Meal boxes now.

I mentioned in my last entry how much I like to collect stories in hopes of preserving the past. There seem to be obvious parallels with my collection of old stuff. While I fanatically sorted things out over the weekend, I realized that I had kept so many of these things not simply because I had connected with them emotionally but also because I connected them to memories, as if I needed to hold onto them in order to hold onto the happy moments of my past. Now, I may have been onto something: After spending much of the 1 a.m. hour on a box loaded with stuff from eighth grade, I'll be darned if I wasn't a bit disoriented upon realizing that the year was 2007 and that I was married and on my way to becoming a pastor. But who has that much time to go back in time? Or that much space? I don't. Not anymore. And I like my life now.

Over the weekend (in which I also ended up reprising my role as drummer at my home church's polka service for Pulaski Polka Days, as shown here in a photo kindly taken by my high school English teacher, Mrs. Nickerson), I threw out a lot of really silly junk. Even better, I set aside a bunch of things to give away — there's no reason that I needed to keep all that stuff for so long when some other kid could put it to good use. I was glad I had a digital camera so I could keep photos of my old stuff that I got so attached to. It got pretty emotional at times, but it was also a lot of fun, not only reliving old times but also finding a certain freedom from all that stuff.

And I have at least started to come to grips with what Tracy has long emphasized: that I don't need to keep the stuff to hold onto the memories. After all, as I looked through the old toys and birthday cards and goofy notes that my dad put in my lunches, it really struck me: It wasn't the stuff itself that made it valuable or that made the happy memories I connected with it ... but rather the love that someone put into it. Most often, that someone was one or both of my parents, who were way better friends to me than any of my toys. I had a tougher time saying goodbye to my folks on Monday than I have in a long time.

I still have a lot of things to sort out — ever since I left Green Bay, I've been plotting out all the items I need to tackle the next time I'm at home. And I have to admit that I still kept a lot of my stuff. Given their true value, some of those things still mean a lot to me.

And I sure as heck am not going to throw away my uncle.