When you live in a house for 33 years, things tend to accumulate. This is doubly true if you are an only child and neither you nor your mother could part with treasures such as invitations to birthday parties from 1969.

My mom has finally had enough of shoveling snow, replacing decks and fixing toilets. She was reluctant to leave her home until she realized that retirement communities aren't drab, stale waiting rooms where you play shuffleboard until the Grim Reaper calls your number.

No, the newer ones are more like five-star resorts where the Reaper wouldn't get past the gate wearing that musty cloak and toting a farm implement.

When she discovered she could have maid service and an on-site restaurant and never reseal the driveway again, she called a real estate agent, stuck a couple of baskets of flowers out front and started packing.

Well, started clearing. It's been months, and she's still at it. Everything she's not taking with her must be sold, given away or tossed.

Or sent to Pittsburgh with me.

I live in a rented duplex with severely limited storage space. If Mom had given me a year or two's warning, I would have bought a house just for the attic and basement. It is a time-honored tradition to transfer boxes of, um, heirlooms from parent's house to child's until either diamonds are formed or "Antiques Roadshow" comes to town.

Instead, every time I visit my mom, I have to sort. If I stop to take a break or eat a meal, she will bring me items one or two at a time.

"Remember this?"

"When did you wear these?"

"Did I make this?"

"Do you want these?"

"Who gave you that?"

She also does this when I'm not there. All our phone conversations now seem to go like this:

"Hi, Mom! What are you doing?"

"Shredding! Boy, I got receipts for things from 20 years ago. Listen, I was going through your closet. ... Do you still want those notebooks from your college classes? What about your prom gowns? There are shoeboxes with letters tied up with ribbons -- I didn't read them, don't worry, but you want those, right? What about these posters from high school plays?"

I don't like to make some of these decisions sight unseen, so it's all waiting when I visit: Christmas ornaments, hats, pictures. Clip-on earrings from the '80s. (So from the '80s. Did I wear them? Why?) Toys and dolls.

Those are especially wrenching, due to the "Toy Story" factor, the conviction that toys are secretly alive and talk like Tom Hanks and Annie Potts.

It hurts to send Eeyore, for example, to a landfill. He was homemade, of gray corduroy. There is a photo of me as a baby, cradled in my mother's arms as my grandfather holds Eeyore out to me. He had a weak fold in his neck, and the fabric would tear periodically, exposing the old pantyhose he was stuffed with. (Eeyore, not my grandfather.)

I also said goodbye to a half-dozen dolls, their hair ruined by bathtub scrubbing and violent styling, their voices lost, their dresses stained or missing. How do old dolls wind up naked? I found Dawn in her underpants. Where are their clothes? Are there wild parties in toy boxes?

They ended up, literally, limbs akimbo, in a sad pile like Iraqi prisoners.

But it wasn't all grim. There were envelopes of birthday cards ("You're 3!"), some with a flattened party hat or squashed candle, and comical handmade holiday greetings ("HAPY MOTHRS DAY I LOV YOU").

And there were works of art and literature from my first decade. My profound lack of artistic ability was evident from earliest childhood. But so was the authoritative tone I would someday need as a columnist and copy editor, as shown in "Sam's Alphabet Book," dictated to a teacher and illustrated by the author:

"A is for alligator. Alligators are reptiles. If you say they are mammals, you are wrong."

"P is for porcupine. Porcupines are covered with sharp quills. You better stay away from them."

I threw out a lot of my childhood, but I kept that book. And my Pooh bear, even though he seems to have survived a nuclear blast. I'm not sure where I'll put them, but I do know one thing.

You definitely will not want to help me move.