The Room of 1,000 Decisions
There is a place in our house that I call The Room of 1,000 Decisions. I’ve had various ideas for this space over the years – mainly that it would be used for crafting and my office – but it seems to actually always resemble The Room of Requirement from the Harry Potter series – a messy display of knick knacks that are perhaps unaware of their significance unless the right person happens to need them. There are crafting supplies, yes. Glue sticks and rhinestones, folders with cute stationery inside, a cabinet filled with fabric that never seems to get cut or sewn. Cards I want to keep don’t have a container; rather, they have floor space. There is veterinary information on top of a pile of mixed papers and tiny tiles I’d like to use for decorative magnets. Next to a Cricut machine that is plugged in and waiting to die cut, I’ve left a half-made bracelet I was beading the week our late dog Neville became sick. It’s been three years since I’ve worked on it.
Over the years, I placed stacks of mail in The Room of 1,000 Decisions. This was a forced game of hide and seek for the envelopes and bills, stashed there hurriedly before company arrived. Unfortunately, out of sight means out of mind and these stacks are rarely sought. Travis once got out of jury duty due to this hide and seek game, it is true.
Unfortunately, unlike the Room of Requirement, there is no magic in the Room of 1,000 Decisions – no diadem or Mirror of Erised or vanishing cabinet. This is unfortunate as I’d really like to send those bills somewhere and vanish unused items rather than spend unknown amounts of time organizing and donating them. I would enjoy waving a wand to make a hanging clock work again, and cast a spell to make all the undone projects, well, done.
It's not that the room is never clean. I occasionally rummage through the rubbish, give garbage to garbage collectors, and others’ golden treasures to Goodwill. I lean the ironing board against a different wall, think about fixing pants draped on the sewing machine, lift the lid from a tub of memories and decide it can be moved to a different room, hidden on one side of our guest bed until family or friends arrive months into the future. I find postcards I’ve purchased but haven’t sent yet, and then I send them! I look through old calendars with art so pretty that I cut them up and send favorite pieces to my mom and friends because, well, I can’t throw them away. Maybe the art will brighten walls or refrigerators across state lines, or maybe my mom and friends will toss the pages, but at least they will help make one of 1,000 decisions for me.
I did that recently – cut up calendars and mailed the art with pretty postcards and it reminded me of something my grandma would have done. In one of my cleanouts of The Room of 1,000 Decisions, I found a small scrapbook she’d made for me with images cut from magazines and collaged quotes. The scrapbook was tied with ribbon. It seems some beautiful things that my grandma couldn’t throw away were glued, packaged, and sent many years ago to me, and maybe I helped make one of 1,000 decisions for her. As a child, I remember receiving pictures of endangered animals from her, and if my memory is correct, those pictures also came from calendars that doubled as artwork she wanted to share.
As I made this connection between my grandma and me, as I sliced calendars’ months one at a time, I started to miss her all over again. My breath became shallow and my heart ached.
Then, the next day, in The Room of 1,000 Decisions, I found a purple, floral card with my grandma’s handwriting so sloppy I could only make out half the words. However, given what I could understand, I knew it was most likely the last letter she ever sent to me, as she passed away months later. In the note, she wrote that she enjoyed my last visit and our day trip through the middle of Utah where we went on a literal wild goose chase to witness a white snow goose migration. We drove 2.5 hours from St. George, Utah, to the tiny town of Delta and spent additional hours driving all around a reservoir and farms looking for the geese, until someone pointed us in the direction of where we could hear their honking, and there they were – thousands of snow geese majestically gathering in a field at sunset. We barely saw them in time, then ate at a local diner and drove 2.5 hours back to St. George. It was a long but fulfilling day, full of great conversation and beautiful birds. In her letter, my grandma said she was glad we found the geese because she wanted my mom to see them so much. She added that Travis was a good driver and her dog Max enjoyed us, too.
I found a spot for that letter in a binder filled with other notes, a Taylor Swift poster from the Eras Tour movie, a Grand Ole Opry program, and solar eclipse glasses that I’ll surely need again someday and won’t know where to find them. Basically, my grandma’s letter now rests in what may someday become The Binder of 1,000 Decisions.
It’s not in the room anymore though, and besides, finding my grandma’s writing makes me think: Maybe our cluttered old room had some magic in it, after all.
