A Hoarder’s Daughter Yields to a (Little) Mess

Judy Batalion - The New York Times
January 4, 2013

Photo: Unsplash

I grew up in a Montreal duplex lined with old newspapers, videocassettes and a Tetris puzzle of cobwebbed credenzas. My mother, born on my grandparents’ flight from Nazi-occupied Poland, had formative years filled with loss. She saved everything, but in doing so, created physical and emotional barriers between us. Her kitchen was not used for family meals, but to host fortresses of molding tuna cans and bags of insect-infested flour. The path to her bed was so covered with files and clothes that I could not reach her if I had a nightmare. I was an anxious child who feared intimacy.

Ashamed of the mess, I fled at 18, and spent my adult life cleaning up. I became a professional neat freak, curating white-walled art galleries. In my 30s, I met Jon, whose mother was a hoarder as well. He had not become the militant minimalist I had, but was empathetic, allowing me to create a dream home according to my mantra: “less is too much.”

Until I came home from the hospital with my newborn daughter to find the clean white walls and clear white surfaces that I found so grounding, obscured by a half-assembled crib and changing table. Where there had been empty space, there was now a stroller, brightly colored hats and snowsuits, breast pumps and sterilizers, monitors shaped like sheep and towels with monkey hoods. My husband began to create a world for our daughter, and I sat in the enormous new glider and tried to breathe.

“Look what I bought at the Chelsea Crafts Fair,” Jon said as he excitedly displayed an elephant made of recycled sweaters, a turtle in a Pac-Man sweatshirt, and a Japanese sock puppet — with a mini iPod.

“How can you do this?” I cried. “It’s taken me years to accumulate all this nothing!”

I would not be a mother blocked from her baby. I would not let her report cards disappear in a domestic maelstrom or fill her shelves with unopened boxes of useless bargains. I would love her and see her and touch her— by being organized. I handed Zelda to Jon. Despite doctor’s orders not to lift anything, I collected all my strength to do what was most important: clean up.

Zelda’s arrival was just the beginning. When she turned 3 months, cousins I had not seen since my bat mitzvah appeared with used playpens, vibrating swings, and an Elmo collective. A colleague passed on a suitcase of old nursing bras. My neighbor dropped off a duffel bag of her niece’s baby Uggs.

I was perpetually on edge. I developed a system: I installed open shelving units so all objects could be stacked and seen. I purchased bins for cuddlies, and marked off an area of my sink for the BPA-free bottles. When my daughter napped, I tucked items into their place: short-sleeve onesies on the right, long-sleeve on the left. I made sure there were clear vistas across the apartment and straight lines always in view.

At 6 months, Zelda started crawling and clutching. Mini-straws showed up in the bath, banana-shaped toothbrushes in my purse. Still, I managed. At night, when Jon put her to bed, I frantically scrubbed the floors by hand with disinfectant wipes, putting every teether and sippy cup in its place.

The serenity I created with my nightly deep cleans lasted until Zelda began eating solid food. My adult fridges had contained only condiments — a testament to the memory of my mother’s mold-infested kitchen. Now, I had to stock up on rice crackers and pears. Zelda’s eating was a full body experience. Sticky unidentifiable residues coated my pristine surfaces. I imagined crumbs rotting behind cabinets and gluey cereal caught in cupboard hinges. I was drowning. There was no way to get at all of the mess.

On her first birthday, my little girl celebrated by throwing salmon in my lap and giving me a yogurt mustache. “Eat!” I urged, sweating over the highchair, spooning with one hand and using the other to wet-wipe the pulverized broccoli running down the furniture. But she refused, splashing squash, jabbing my face with her ergo-spoon. Suddenly, it struck me: she wanted to feed me.

Had she been wanting to do that for a while?

I’d been so busy removing obstacles to seeing my daughter that I barely had time to look at her. In my desperate attempt to not be my mother, I ended up repeating her behavior. She tried to make up for her childhood by filling her home with objects; I countered my youth by ridding them. But both of us could be blind when it came to our children.

I looked at the spoon’s unruly mix of saliva, seafood and milk. No matter how much I cleaned up, I could not control the disorder of motherhood.

Then Zelda splashed the concoction across my white shirt.

“No!” The orange gloop dribbled down my front. I quickly reached to wipe it, but caught my daughter’s eyes. In her subtle hazel hues I saw a twinge of disappointment. Instead, I dug into the mélange and smeared it across my cheeks.

My daughter let out a wailing giggle of delight.