“The Junk Collecting Gene” by Rebecca Pollock

I stand to inherit more bric-a-brac than could ever be sold at any flea market. It isn’t all garbage, as the word might suggest, nor is it an assortment of figurines and thimbles. Amidst the dust that has been collecting in our home over the twenty-one years my parents have lived there, there are valuable antiques and fossils begging to be displayed in a museum somewhere. But our home is not a museum. It is small and cramped and dark, and my father is in the early stages of hoarding.

He has piled up stacks of old tins and set scads of glass bottles in front of the windows, so deep they no longer refract sunlight. He has entwined deer antlers atop our television and even overlapped the antlers of his mounted buck with more he found in the woods. He has filled woven baskets with innumerable wine corks. He has hung kitchen gadgets predating his fifty-three years of life from our kitchen ceiling, but we are not permitted to use them because they are too treasured. And he has eliminated nearly all wall space with photos and canvases depicting people he never knew. All of these things weigh on us that live there, but because I am the youngest, the most sympathetic to his quirks, when he can no longer care for himself I will be the one caring for him and his stuff.

To my mother’s dismay, my older sister, Brianna, and I have discussed my father’s fate in great lengths with a heartless distance. From the kitchen sink she has yelled to us, “He is your father, not just my husband!” but we continued discussing him as if he were an unwanted houseguest. Brianna has resigned my parents to a nursing home in their impending old age. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to care for my mother; in fact I believe she would do so eagerly since her belongings could easily be reduced to a moving box or two.  As my mother has insisted though, she and my father are a package deal, so Brianna will take neither. My oldest sister, Lauren, should assume the responsibility of caretaker merely for traditions sake, but she lives on the opposite coast and has three children of her own. My father, diagnosed with severe ADHD, would be the troublesome fourth and a questionable influence in my sister’s household. That leaves me. I can see myself in thirty years, exhausted and coated in a thin layer of grime, sitting amongst boxes, attempting to place price tags on each item in each of my father’s collections, wiping my sweaty forehead with the back of my hand before moving him into my home.

***

In middle school, through slumber parties at other girls’ houses, I learned that it isn’t normal for a home to be filled with so much stuff. Suburban homes should be spacious with coasters, lamps, and maybe a magazine resting gracefully on matching end tables. As a result, I never threw my own slumber party, nor did I invite many friends over. I remember too, on the drives to these parties, scooting my butt forward and ducking my head down in the passenger seat as my father pulled off the road to rummage through intriguing trash piles, afraid we were in front of the house of a classmate. This is also when I developed an interest in minimalistic, modern interior design and swore I’d forever live in a white room with only necessary furniture.

In recent years, as my father’s mass of belongings has encroached upon our meager living space, we’ve attempted to reason with him, encourage him to empty the house some. I’ve tried to cite my reclusive childhood as evidence for how his hobby has affected his children, but he just doesn’t get it. My father instead insists that our house is “Cool, man!” He is continually mystified by all of his possessions.

Though it went against my better judgment, I brought a few boyfriends home. I remember inviting my high school boyfriend in when he picked me up for a movie only to have him swept away by my father. My father pulled out whatever new rocks he had at the time – fossils, supposed Native American artifacts – and handed them one by one to my boyfriend. His deep blue eyes lit up as he passed the rocks, explaining their origin.

“I found this one down by the river. Look at the groove. I’m pretty sure it was a Native American axe head.” Or on another occasion: “I bought this fossil at a rock shop. The guy didn’t know what he was giving up for so cheap.”

My boyfriend took them silently, intimidated by my father’s excitement, and I waited by the door for some reason aggrieved at his disinterest.

When I brought my college boyfriend home to meet my parents, I prepped him first with words like “eccentric” and “passionate.” I told him outright about my father’s peculiarities and warned him to duck his six-foot-four frame when walking through our kitchen. He later admitted that he didn’t know what to expect because he thought I might have been embellishing, but that day, when he got back into my car he let out a deep breath, slapped his hands to his knees, and shook his head in affirmation, “Yeah. Overwhelming. I get it. Your dad spoke so fast. I didn’t know what I was even supposed to be looking at.”

When home from college a few weeks ago, I casually asked my father if he had ever watched the show Hoarders. His immediate indignation told me that he had: “I’m nothing like those people! They save garbage. I don’t have nearly as much stuff, and it’s all valuable. I’m saving it for a reason. Those people are disgusting.”

I tried to tell my father that he sounded just like the woman from the previous night’s episode, that she thought her junk had value too, that she alienated her daughter because of it, but he yelled that I was attacking him.

I don’t believe my father will ever hoard enough to be on that show. He was right, those people do save complete garbage, and his stuff does have intrigue. His trunks and crates are begging to be rummaged through. I am terrified to admit this. In thirty years, when I am to decide the fate of my father’s belongings, I worry I will chose to keep them all.

Even now, I find myself attached to my father’s collections. Although the only sign of his age is his white hair, I think about what I might want to keep when he dies. I’ve placed dibs on furniture – my great-grandmother’s rocking chair, an arts-and-crafts style desk, a sewing table, and a letterpress type drawer used as a shelf, though without the knick-knacks on it. I’ve thought about what sort of jars I’d like to use for flowers, and I’ve planned shadow boxes to display trilobites and sharks teeth. The harsh lines of modernism no longer interest me as they once did. Instead I find myself attracted to the uniqueness and the history of the antiques. I still detest the clutter in which we live, but the possessions fascinate me.

I look around my dorm room and already acknowledge the random items I took from my father: an old desk organizer I spray painted chartreuse, a hand carved mirror frame repainted teal, a mason jar filled with pens.

My father has long seen himself as a provider, his stuff as his provisions. He believes he has been collecting to build a legacy, but his daughters never wanted it. After years of protesting, complaining about the strange and unneeded things he forced into my room, I now find myself willfully taking them. Thinking of my father’s belongings crowding our home puts a metallic taste in my mouth. It’s comforting though, so I let it linger.