The List Makers

I was raised in a household that was run with lists. We had lists for everything from groceries to emergencies. We made lists of pros and cons, chores, what to bring, who to invite, what to buy and where things were.

My father kept a notebook in the kitchen that was filled with typed pages of lists for caregivers. Emergency numbers were first, followed by pet care. Then there were the school lists. Lists of classmates and school holidays. The camp trunk packing list. The list of where things were kept. If you needed a broom or more toilet paper, this was the list for you, in alphabetical order. Of course order was what my widowed father was hoping to achieve with all these lists and it worked for us. I don’t know how he became a list maker. Maybe it was because he worked in publishing, an industry that produced weekly lists of best sellers.

My father wasn’t the only list maker I grew up with. My maternal grandmother kept lists of inventory for her China and linens. These were handwritten in her careful script and tacked inside the shelves. My stepmother kept lists. She kept a packet of index cards in her purse and kept a list of every dime she spent. Once I started receiving an allowance, I was presented with my own set of cards for my school bag and list making.

In the summer, We had lists for opening and closing our cottage and preparing for hurricanes. In the kitchen, there was a list of all the fire box locations in our village, so we could tell when the fire horn blew where the engines would head.

Every year in our Christmas stockings, we all received red monogrammed Smythson pocket diaries that came with preprinted yearly lists of holidays, sporting events, and conversions.

Of course, now I see that all these lists were really coping mechanisms to keep stress and anxiety at bay. Making lists helped to keep us organized and focused and kept us from forgetting things as we muddled through our losses. When my stepmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, I realized that many of her lists were her way of trying to make sense of her eroding memory.

Now I keep my lists on my phone. I keep lists of what I’ve watched and what I’ve read, what we cooked and groceries we need. I keep lists of what to pack, household chores, of staples that we need. I am able to sort these lists any way I like which is a game changer and print them as a bonus. I can only imagine that my father would have loved that.

I still pick up a Smythson diary every year for Auld Lang Syne, even though I can Google all the lists that are inside. It’s nice to have a tradition to carry on.

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