* * *

Like most of the mistakes I’ve made—wearing a three-piece brown corduroy “suit” (jacket, vest, and skirt) for my bat mitzvah instead of a dress; refusing to take remedial SAT classes after repeatedly failing to crack 500 on either the verbal or math sections; telling people I don’t like carrots and squash and other orange vegetables instead of just lying like a normal person and saying I’m allergic to them; marrying Gary instead of someone else or maybe not getting married at all—to name only a few—there are so many—I consider wearing the dog to be something that happens “by accident.”

I don’t go down to the basement that day with the intention of looking for the sling a vegetarian friend gave me years ago when Teddy was born that I’d mocked but never used. Back then, I couldn’t imagine “wearing” my newborn all day across my chest in what looked like a giant diaper. Teddy had been ten pounds at birth. Hadn’t I “worn” him long enough? The front carrier, a BabyBjörn, another gift, was too complicated—so many straps; so many clasps—but the sling seemed even worse. Uncomfortable and unfashionable. Ridiculous, even. I’d taken it out of its eco-friendly burlap sack long enough to roll my eyes at it before repacking it and shoving it into the back of a drawer. Eventually it ended up in one of the big plastic containers from Teddy’s babyhood marked SAVE in extra thick black Sharpie on a jagged piece of masking tape. All caps, in case there was ever any question.

The day I descend the stairs I have the de-cluttering book’s central question in my head—whether the objects in my basement give me joy or not—to determine whether they should be kept or thrown away. So little gives me joy now that I’m afraid I’ll get rid of every single thing I’ve ever owned and end up with nothing. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Feeling empty only makes me want to be emptier. But within minutes of pawing through the first big plastic box, full of Teddy’s old clothes, I find neatly folded pajamas and jerseys and pants, all impossibly tiny, all heartbreakingly meaningful: the French-striped newborn-onesie we’d brought him home in; the tiger shirt he vomited all over at four months but that I managed to wash in time so it didn’t stain; his first pair of dinosaur pajamas from when he was three; his last pair of Batman underwear from when he was five. Each item I unfold and refold crushes me. Each time that I ask myself the book’s central question, my answer is always the same: these used to give me joy but don’t anymore, because they only remind me of what isn’t anymore.

I’m into semantics now, but I don’t have the book itself—I was too cheap to buy it and couldn’t square the internal conflict between acquiring a possession (the book) for the express purpose of clearing away possessions—to clarify whether, based on the past/present issue, I should keep or purge the things that once gave me joy but now only make me want to stab my eyes out. I blink at the sea of plastic containers, at all the buried treasure—all the best years—babyhood, toddlerhood, the preschool and elementary school years—everything before middle school—forever gone. I drop to my knees then, onto the damp musty cement floor, my hands still touching the clothes, and weep—a messy untidy unjoyful kind of weeping. I wish I could purge myself of my self.