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Where is my black Chinese teapot—the heavy one with the rough fish scales covering the surface and the wide handle that makes it easy to pour? This teapot conveys its own gravity; if I lift it to fill a small cup I feel its presence. Tea from this pot is not to be swallowed lightly. Surely I would not have misplaced a pot of such importance.

But I might have given it away. I give away most things. When my daughter was five and we were cleaning out in the spring, I let her give away her old favorite doll. “Some little girl who doesn’t have a doll will love it,” I told her. An hour later she came to me heart-broken and sobbing. “I gave her away, with no clothes on.” I hadn’t stopped her. I don’t stop myself from divesting.

Why is it that I give everything away so easily, and then worry that I am not connected? Where does this come from? Connection is central to life, but I am willing to dispose of possessions, memories, and sometimes people. My past evaporates at my direction. I live lightly on the land, proud of my transient nature. But today I am searching for that pot. Perhaps it is not wise to reinvent myself constantly, snakelike. Perhaps a little holding on would be a better course.

Some part of my need to divest must come from my place in my family. My mother is a saver. The basement of her house still holds boxes never unpacked from the last move, now some forty years ago. Mother worries what will happen to all the things in the house, like shoes from the 50s and nylon windbreakers and boxes of commemorative plates and enough gift-wrap for a decade. But each time I offer to unpack those boxes or clean out those closets, she concludes that it would be best to leave things as they are. To her they are valuable. She says, “We can’t just give those clothes away, they are worth something.” To her they are in investment; to me they are a liability. I think Mother believes that I will go through the house with a vengeance when she is no longer there to protect it. I think she imagines me stuffing her belongings into garbage bags and putting the dumpster right tin the driveway. Lately I’ve taken to trying to reassure her by saying, “You’d better keep those things, because we will want them.” But maybe she is right about me.

My daughter is also a saver. When my mother’s sister died, my mother and my daughter sat lovingly together going through the possessions, admiring and dividing the dozens of hats and purses and shoes. Mother is wearing those clothes, though she is 5.3” and her sister was 5’10.” She just used up the last inherited lipstick and it’s been four years. My daughter, an artist, uses the pieces she chose as props in photographs or wears them in downtown New York. I meet her at City Bakery at eight in the morning and she is carrying her great-aunt’s boxy red vinyl purse with the gold closing, circa 1953. She looks good. Although I am the visitor, I am wearing New York black, everything foldable, packable, shippable and disposable. Lately I’ve been buying garments made from tree bark—the better to be discarded.

My daughter’s apartment walls are covered by photographs and fabric and drawings. Every surface inch is decorated. To go there is to visit a foreign country, or several, as it changes often. She’s like her grandmother. They enjoy filling space. I enjoy spending time in monasteries, and one of the main reasons is the emptiness. I love the rooms. When I step into a small cell with a narrow bed, a desk, a sink and one window, I feel at home. Sufficient. Complete. I have everything I need, and for a few days it is all mine. I put a flower or some leaves on the table, or prop up a picture, or tape a poem over the bed. I’ve never had much desire for furniture, so my home looks like an art gallery. This spring a visitor, looking around the first floor, said, “Are you moving in or out?”

But living in monastic space is one thing, and living the monastic, unattached life is another. Non-attachment is a tranquil way of life, but it is not without cost. Which is why, I think, I am searching for this teapot. I don’t know what it symbolizes, but letting go of so much may be a strategy that needs revisiting.

Perhaps the teapot is on my mind because teapots are ceremonial. They are crafted for deliberate use, sometimes with rules in rituals, sometimes with others in celebration or welcome or consolation. I can make a cup of tea without a pot; choosing to use the pot serves another purpose. Divesting myself of possessions and leaving people is an efficient mechanism for moving on, but it skips a step. The step is ritual. When we let go of something important, we need to grieve. We need to be deliberate. We need to face what we are doing. We need ritual. What am I doing? What am I leaving?

I left my parents home as soon as I got out of college. I remain 3000 miles away, although my parents need my attention now. I left two husbands to move on, because it was so much easier than trying to fix things. I do not miss those husbands anymore than I miss tossed-out cardigan sweaters. I urged people who had worked for me happily for years to move on to new jobs with difficult bosses, the better to enlarge their life experience. I left jobs myself because there was nothing new to learn, and I am easily bored. I don’t leave everything, and possessions are only possessions. I did not leave my dog, and I do not leave my cat. Actually, I do leave my cat occasionally but I always come back, and I am teaching him to be self-sufficient. He’s learned to go to the neighbor’s window if he is hungry or needs to talk.

I have remained connected to my neighbors for over a decade now. I love the neighbors. On my block I am the person who rolls in the garbage cans and picks up the newspapers. At Easter I make construction paper baskets filled with eggs and cookies and leave them on porches early in the morning. I encourage the adolescent girls and keep an eye on the babies and the new mothers. I share with the women my age the never-ending, stomach-churning roller coaster of parenting, which seems to become harder as they children grow up and struggle with life on their own, far away and not wanting our help.

And I do not leave my friends. I am good at friendship. It does not occur to me to buy new bedspreads or shop for end tables, but I always know how my friends are, and what they need, and what I can do for them. Most of my friends are women, varying ages, varying backgrounds. I write to them, send them clippings from the New York Times, and share my book list. Our lives are interwoven, and I do more than my share of the weaving. Women have always formed strong bonds of friendship, and over the past 20 years I find friendship increasingly easy to construct and maintain. We’ve all learned that each of us is strange in a different way, and there’s nothing to be gained from holding back, and stories come tumbling out quickly.

So my life is full of friends, if not things. Good friends. People to do things with, to talk to, a few to confide in, friends who will be my created family when I need chemotherapy or a liver transplant. These are people not thrown away or held casually; they are cherished.

But these friends don’t live with me, and their lives do not depend on mine. I prefer not to be the center of anyone’s universe. So it seems that what I really leave is difficulty, and one kind of difficulty for me is men. Those two husbands, who turned out to be human. I had no will to stay and change, stay and make things better, stay and figure it all out. In particular, I had no will to stay and talk about it. I have mastered re-invention, but not perseverance. I can join in with enthusiasm as long as I can get out with ease.

Is it true that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose? No baggage, no burdens, no having to check in with someone or adjust your schedule or share the bathroom. Deep down, I don’t share well. I want my spare space the way I want it. You can spend the night, but you have to go home early the next morning. You can travel with me but I’ll drive and I need a few hours to myself each day. I have become like a 20 year old man—commitment is not an option.

Is it because of the vacuum where acquisition normally falls that I cannot stay attached to a man? Are the genes for possessions and commitment intertwined? I spent too many years in love with an unavailable man, and I now realize just how well this has served me. He comes, he goes. I cry, I long, I languish, and then I re-invent myself. We change the conditions slightly each decade; first he was unavailable cause of religion, then because of marriage, and now we’re back to religion. This shadow dance allows me to preserve the possibility of moving West, going to Law School, reading the Great Books and restructuring my body. Anything can happen. I do not misplace this man. Unlike the teapot, I always know where he is. I put him away into my psychic attic until I need him, and somehow he shows up whenever my life becomes too difficult to face or offers some possibility of settling down. I do not let go of this one thing that I do not have.

Well, maybe 60 is when I settle down. All those options I’ve believed were mine are starting to seem less likely in the face of the American youth culture, the realities of the workplace, the real world of family responsibilities and commitments. Besides, the West is getting crowded. If I stayed home for a whole year and stopped discarding I could get the garden into shape, make a quilt, maybe even buy curtains. I could learn the Japanese tea ceremony, which only takes ten years if you practice with the same people every day.

Nancy Carson
9/98 - Italy