So Much Paper

Excavation and the art of letting go

Pablo Lancaster, Unsplash

My dad talks a lot about not being here forever. “When I kick the bucket” is a phrase that’s come up, hilarious in its retro image and sorrowful for me. He worries about his legacy and what will be left behind. Recently, he asked me to take some personal documents from his apartment for safe-keeping in my house. Of course, I said yes. I don’t like to say no and I want to offer reassurance where I can. My writing career has been dependent on aging pieces of paper and digital records. I also know about impermanence and that in the end, most paper means little in the grand scheme of human history.

When I got the first pile of documents home, I noticed that many related to two settlements my mother received. The first was from the Austrian government that finally acknowledged its role in the persecution of its Jewish population during the era of National Socialism and paid my mother and my uncles as restitution for lost property and income. This restitution also included a monthly pension payment that she received until her death in 2006. The second settlement related to a class action suit against the company responsible for the mesothelioma that killed her, a cancer caused by exposure to airborne asbestos. The final settlement came after she’d already died. This seems a long time ago now, though my memories of her last months of illness are vivid. I decided that the paper documentation is of no use to anyone in our family or any future descendants. I can understand why my father kept everything. In the years since my mother died, he has remarried. There are a few photos of her, also some of my stepmother’s husband who also died of cancer. My father insisted on removing most of my mother’s personal possessions—a move I thought healthy—and so in some way, these piles of paper remained in file drawers as a record of her existence. It happened, it was tragic, and no amount of paper can undo this tragedy. All I can do now is to let it all go.

Among all the papers I brought home, here’s what I will save: a letter from an editor at Simon & Schuster. The letter records a dispute he had with my father about a book jacket. The editor did not like the typefaces and colors, he found them weak. Evidently, my father disagreed with equal force. The letter is kind of sorry-not-sorry document, an apology for his language but also protesting words my father spoke during their argument. During his long publishing career, my father was notorious, feared by many editors, even more so by their assistants. He considered himself the frontline commander in defense of his designers’ work and did not give way easily or graciously. A partial list of the world-class designers he worked with includes the late, great Carin Goldberg, Louise Fili, Paula Scher of Pentagram, Fred Marcellino, Robert Anthony, and Paul Bacon. I have been accused of unreasonable dedication to my own design team’s work. I struggle to find ways to manage my outrage when confronted with terrible choices.

Here’s a related story. Back in the late 1980s, I was out of college and worked in the art department at Harper Collins Publishers. Since both our offices were in Midtown, my dad would often invite me to have lunch.

One of our favorite spots was a French bistrot where, in winter months, we always ordered pot-au-feu. This is a seemingly plain and humble dish of boiled beef, vegetables, and potato. It sounds simple enough until you try to make it at home. Perfect silky bone broth, tender but not mushy veg and meat that surrenders to the first prod of a fork. An aroma so satisfying it won over an erstwhile vegetarian, as I was back then. The waiter at this restaurant knew my father well and cared deeply about our enjoyment of this classic dish. He’d hover about as the steaming dishes were placed before us and wait for us to taste a sip of broth. The glitzier customers around us never ordered pot au feu, perhaps because it failed to look extravagant on a plate. Their loss. My dad drank wine at lunch and on these occasions I did too, though it did nothing good for afternoon productivity.

On one of these days I went to meet my father at his office. Upon exiting the elevator on his floor, I turned towards the hallway that led to the Art Department. Facing me, at the end of the hall was a yelling match in progress. My dad vs. one of the most important editors at the company. We often heard her name mentioned at dinner when my parents would rehash the day’s skirmishes. It was hard to tell who was winning this particular yelling match, but when my dad saw me, he smiled sheepishly and waited for me to join him. I greeted the editor and she smiled. I figured they would pick up where they left off after lunch and I bet they did.

The letter I found in my dad’s papers is a record of some similar yelling match, and it reads like a short story.

I’ve told my father that on my future trips to visit him we need to discard more paper such as tax returns from decades ago. He’s agreed, to my relief. Maybe I’ll find a few treasures mixed in with proof that he paid his taxes in 1999.

It’s hard to let go of so much paper. Now I’m trying to let go of my own piles. We moved to our current house with over fifty boxes of books and boxes of papers I know I no longer need. How freeing it would be to walk away from it all. There is the part of me that fears an IRS audit doing battle with the part of me that fantasizes about a room with two chairs and a small gathering of striped Maine rocks in a corner. Perhaps these two can meet in the middle.

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You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and purchase here.

I work privately with memoir writers. You can reach out via my website: juliemetz.com.