Keep it, because you never know . . .

Beverly Beckham

The Boston Globe

October 25, 2015

You never know is the reason I have a closet full of shoes and boots and coats and hats I don't wear.

For years, my husband has been suggesting that for every thing new I bring into the house, an old thing should go out. When he began telling me this a million years ago, I a) ignored him and b) was a young woman who didn't foresee that one day I might be one of the "old things."

You see, my husband lives by this rule. If he buys new shoes, he throws out the scuffed-beyond-redemption ones. If he loses a glove, he doesn't save the other "just in case." If he outgrows a suit, he doesn't hold it up and look at it with longing and remember when it fit, then stick it back in the closet because, you never know.

He doesn't live by "You never know."

But I do. You never know is the reason I have a closet full of shoes and boots and coats and hats I don't wear. Because you never know when I'm going to need the white stocking hat that says "Belle" in big blue letters, which my friend Caryn knitted for me 40 years ago, every stitch an act of love. You never know when that blouse I bought in 1975, which never fit, will fit. You never know when the very thing you haven't worn in 10 years is the very thing you'll absolutely need one day.

Plus, there's the sentimental value of things.

I have baby blankets I cannot part with, not the soft, white with blue and pink stripes at the edges, swaddling blankets the hospital wrapped my children in when they came home. It took 30-plus years, but they're finally gone. But all the pink and blue squares and rectangles knitted and crocheted by people who loved my grandchildren enough to sit for hours to make these things. How could I part with even one?

Then there are the baby books. "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." "Bear Snores On." "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do you see?" Bears an obvious theme. We have no use for them. The babies are kids. That's what my husband says. But I love these books. I love their worn covers, their familiar words.

A lifetime ago I belonged to Literary Guild and Doubleday, a combination that made it possible to binge on books. Six for 99 cents. It was the deal of the last century. Back then my house was overrun with books.

I donated most of them to the library. But it killed me. I still miss my Nora Lofts.

That's the thing. You never know what you'll miss. My husband says I can download anything, anytime, that I don't have to have a physical book. He's right, but I still can't part with books and when I try, when I actually fill a box and take it to "Savers," I always come home with a bigger pile of different books.

I gave my wedding dishes to my daughter recently. I love my daughter. I love that she loves the dishes. I said, here take them. I don't use them. They match your dining room. I packed them carefully. I was glad to see them go.

And yet, there was a little of me that wanted to say, Wait! No! Stop! Because my mother-in-law gave them to me when I was 20. Because whenever I look at them, I remember her and me and then.

Take a picture, my husband says. I have taken pictures. But it's not just sentiment that makes me reluctant to toss out the old.

Last week I bought new mascara. And put the old one in my car "just in case." I bought new reading glasses, 3 for $10. And put the scratched ones in my desk drawer because "you never know."

He bought a new brown belt. And threw away the old one. "Why would I keep it?" he asks.

I look at it and think, "Why would he throw it away?"