mishegoss 5th musing on descending to the basement

                                                                                                                                                        

Michegoss: Literally insanity, madness. 
definition from Leo Rosten's The Joy of Yiddish. One of my dad's favorite books

1) a wacky, irrational absurb belief
2) A state of affairs so silly or unreal that it defies explanation.
3) A piece of tomfoolery, clowning, "horsing around"

And so I find a definition, a yiddish word for the work that I am embarking on.

It fits.

It fits the piles, the feeling of insurmountable chaos. The books of Jim's that he loved so well and so deeply. It fits the old red schoolbooks of mine with my students names.... they are grown up and married...it fits the old phonograph records piled in a box... the financial outdated records..and in the midst of all that.....a dress I wore just about this time for a friend's wedding...decades ago as they stood in front of her parents fireplace......... now he looks down from his heavenly place and she mourns him as she struggles with a bad hip.
and all my brothers art piled up and miscellaneous boxes of Real Mischgoss, the random papers of a life that proliferate and pile up...
Mishegoss
I guess I am grateful that there is a word to describe all this somehow.

It will take time, insight and simple hard work to move the basement from mishegoss to order.

 My hands will need to not only be my physical hands...but my inner hands that can handle hard emotions and hands like a mystical hamsa that can see into what needs to be done.

I sit now at my laptop...typing in blue..musing... long winter lies ahead...a meloncholoy melody plays..and the task in the basement seems daunting...but armed with my mothers wisdom and the zeal to reveal and heal what and who my father was...yes..I think I can do it..
Yes I can conquer the mishegoss and find a way to make order and communicate the rich life my father led through reading as well as the rich life my mother gave me of finding reflection and journaling the inner life.....
and so I look ahead inwardly and outwardly to what the basement treasures will reveal...and I feel confident that I will find a way to conquer the mishegoss.....somehow.....