When Rachael turned 18 in August, a lot of friends asked me how I felt about it.

“You have no idea how relieved I am,” I said. “I can no longer be prosecuted for anything she does.”

The truth was a bit more complex, of course.

I’ve begun to realize that I can’t just think my way through the changes that I have to go through now. I have to feel my way through them, too.

I feel a pervasive sense of loss at no longer being the parent of a child. She’s still the most important person in my life, but I’m not responsible for guiding the life that she’s so quickly and ferociously creating for herself. She’s grown and she’s not anyone’s baby any more.

And that means I can lighten up a lot. I don’t have to be totally responsible for two people now, just one.

There are a lot of implications attached to that. It’s not an accident that I don’t have a car anymore, as of this summer, and that I’m in the market for a motorcycle. That’s not mid-life crisis, incidentally. I had that one about thirteen years ago, and I filed for divorce a bit later.

I found that, if I was going to be her Papa, rather than this guy she used to know, in the face of Texas’s monstrous divorce/custody laws and a relentlessly hostile ex-wife, I had to become more of a grown-up than I’d ever been before. It wasn’t easy. Grown-ups have security and stability in their lives. They don’t take unecessary risks. They can’t skimp or do without important things, like medical insurance, as they could when it was just them alone.

They accumulate stuff.

There are a lot of other issues, too, but I’d like to talk about the stuff right now.

I have way too much stuff.

I’ve spent the last few weekends trying to get rid of some of it, and it’s damn hard. Because I’ve gotten emotionally attached to my stuff.

I can’t get rid of the guitars or amps – my Dad keeps giving them to me and making me promise that I’ll keep them. Warren will understand this, I think. I long ago lost count of how many guitars he has, but it’s more than me and I have a lot of them. You never know when you’ll need just that special sound when you’re playing or recording.

The books and magazines are tough. I’ve got a huge collection of old Astounding and Analog magazines. I grew up on them; they shaped my world-view. Same with many of the books. To a large extent, they made me who I am. Tonight in the tub, I decided that I’m going to get a table at next year’s Armadillocon and sell them all. Donate to the library anything I can’t sell. I’ve been fooling myself that I’ll ever read them again.

…Uh….Warren and Caroline have more books than the Library of Congress, incidentally. They haven’t experienced my moment of enlightenment yet. Brad and Barb seem to have the habit a bit more under control, but Ghod knows what they’ve tucked away in the closets. They are addicted to DVD-keeping, though.

The books about writing stay. For years, I could read them and convince myself that I was still a writer, even though I wasn’t writing. Can’t quite let go of them yet, though I seem to be starting to actually write again this fall. (Not a coincidence, either, you say?)

I have over 200 cassette tapes. I tell myself that I’ll digitize the ones worth keeping and give them all to Goodwill. Guess we’ll see how that works out… but I will within the month do a ‘Greatest Hits of Los Blues Guys’ retrospective from old practice tapes and recordings of our various world tours.

I’m keeping all the CDs and DVDs, stacked next to the mounted and functional replica of Sting. It glows blue when Orcs draw near. Never know when that will come in handy.

I have a real gun, but don’t own any bullets. That’s why I’m keeping the BB gun, too.

Oh, yeah, I’m giving away my enormous TV. I put it beside the back door this afternoon. I haven’t actually turned it on for three years, and don’t feel myself getting closer to doing so. It’s nothing but Net for me these days.

Do I really need to keep all those print-outs of drafts of old stories? Four and five copies of each? Nope. Likewise the boxes of 5-1/4″ floppies. The 3-1/2″ boxes are looking a little obsolete these days, too. The hundreds of software CDs…. Oh, Jesus, I don’t want to think about that yet…

The two-foot stack of legal papers chronicling my divorce, multiple custody disputes, and the attendant adventures with the IRS will be gleefully burned. Free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last!

I’m keeping ALL of the pictures that Rachael ever drew. They’ll be invaluable collector’s items one day.

I had a girlfriend once who wanted me to destroy all my old cards and letters from previous girlfriends. Nope. Not then, not now.

There are nine computers in the house. The worst of them will run Win98. I really only need three, I suppose…. I’ve gotten rid of the 15″ monitors. Remember when that was huge? A co-worker is willing to take the 17″ one off my hands.

I can’t remember the the last time anyone sat in the comfy chair. Gone soon.

The closet jammed with old clothes in varying sizes… Well, shit. That’s just gonna be a nightmare. Because I think I’m starting to get rid of some of this no-longer-needed weight again. One reason we gain weight is to armor ourselves against the sharp edges of a frightening world. I’m slowly getting rid of a lot of fear these days, too, because I mostly have only myself to fear for now. Rachael’s safe. She made it to adulthood. So maybe I won’t need that protection any more.

Speaking of which, you would not believe, absolutely are incapable of believing, the amount of stuff that Rachael still has piled in her room. I don’t think she’s ever thrown anything away in her entire life. She has the books I read her when she was a year old. She has toys that came in Happy Meals in 1990. She has the hobby-horse my Dad gave her, and the plastic pretend outdoor barbecue set. The entire top of her bunk-bed is covered in stuffed animals. What’s under the bed makes me shudder.

I am so not going to touch any of that stuff…..

(Okay, I helped Steve and Laura load out for their move from Houston to Albuquerque. Their kids had enough of that kind of stuff to make me feel like Rachael was, relatively, a deprived Third World orphan. Hundreds of boxes of kid stuff. Not kidding.)
.
.
.
.
I realize that I’m getting rid of a lot of my history.

I’m getting rid of the stuff I don’t need anymore, and, most especially, the stuff that’s about pain and sorrow.

But I’m keeping the good stuff.

I’m going to try to keep nothing but the good stuff from now on.