So, I'm back from my week working on-site at Summit in Hood River, OR, and back to the task at hand--packing my stuff to move it to the other side of the country. This may seem a fairly simple task, although packing and moving and unpacking is NEVER a good time.
There are a number of factors affecting the difficulty I'm having with packing. First, I don't know 100% if I will be renting or buying. Second, I don't know if I will be paying for the move or not. Third, I don't know if ultimately, I'm going to like it enough in Oregon to stay there permanently. So, you can see the dilemma I'm having regarding moving all my personal belongings or just some. I'm just small.
Now, you have to consider that I have LOTS of house shit accumulated over the past 11 years. Do I take that maroon twin comforter with sheets, or not? Probably not, right? …because I have a queen-size bed. BUT, one of the places I'm looking at renting is fully furnished, except linens, and there are two twin beds! I'm sure I could just ask my guests to sleep with queen sized sheets on a twin size bed and beach towels as blankets, right? (hey, it's a free place to stay with breakfast included, so beggers shouldn't be choosers).
One of my major problems with this whole packing process--which I think just about anyone would run into in my situation--is that I get caught up on certain things, like say, consolidating 4 junkie little jewelry boxes into one new one that I got as a Pollyannaa Christmas gift this past holiday season. The little jewelry box is cute. It's a really small, pink, leather one with a handle and little cubby holes for a few rings and some secret pockets. It’s way smaller, lighter and more transportable than the other jewely boxes I have. AND, the idea is moving less shit. The first of the four junkie boxes is a fake wood one that I won at a chinese auction when I was a kid. The second is a little craft box that I painted on when I was at the annual brownie camping trip when I was 7. The third is another wooden one, but dark and nicer. My college roommate's mother gave it to me because it matched my bedroom furniture when I got it. :) The last one is a little glass box with a hinged lid and a stained-glass-looking image of Niagara Falls on it that I got in 1999.
I never realized how many of the periods of my life have been marked by some piece of jewelry or other small knickknack that you’d keep. Whilst consolidating, I found my first watch! It’s a little wind-up snoopy watch that has paws instead of hands. I have broken most of the jewelry I’ve received, so I have a special little compartment to hold all those pieces. My mother gave me most of them, so there’s no way I’m tossing them.
Now, onto my favorite thing I found so far.
My dad never gave me many “things”. But, he would always bring me a souvenir back from his annual fishing trip to Canada with his brothers and father, usually a sweatshirt with a wolf on it (still have that too). One year, my dad brought me this little bunny figurine. She’s just small and brown with little black dot-eyes, sitting on a tuft of grass in front of a tree stump. Over the years, the little bunny managed to keep all four paws and tail, but lost her brown and white listeners. She probably hasn’t heard a thing in ten years. This bunny has moved everywhere with me, and has always sat on whatever dresser I was living out of at the time. Okay, this could be really big news for little brown bunny, so get ready…
…
I found one of her ears in jewelry box number one! Yippee! Wow! I yelled, “BUNNY EAR!” You’ll never believe what happened next. As I was cleaning fuzz out of the corner of box number three, I found THE OTHER BUNNY EAR! I ran over and grabbed little brown bunny off the dresser and showed her the ears! I said, “AREN’T YOU EXCITED?” She just looked at me with that blank stare she’s had since we’ve known each other. She really didn’t get excited. So, she either has gotten so used to not having ears that she prefers to be earless, OR, she can’t hear a damn thing I’m saying.
I also came across my high-school class ring, a bunch of broken spoon rings, which I had a parade of. They used to be my “jam”. I decided to keep all of my little random keepsakes in a small fancy watch bag that I have. It’s a silvery little bag with a draw string that pulls from both sides. In jewelry box number three, I found a bunch of clip-on pins from art museums. They’re pretty cool. I also found four little rocks that look like something that came out of one of those rock tumblers. I always circled the rock tumbler in the Sears toy catalog at Christmastime, but I never got it, so I don’t know who these little rocks belong to. There’s nothing that great about the rocks, but I put them in the fancy watch baggy with the rest of my favorite keepsakes so it’ll be like the goonies when I pour them out.
My favorite thing that I ever lost was the really-thick rope chain name bracelet that my mom and dad got me for my confirmation. I lost the bracelet one time in when I was in high school while jerkin’ around in the valley right near Shenandoah. Luckily, about a year before I lost the bracelet, the little silver heart that hung from the bracelet broke off, so I still have something to remember the color, texture and weight of the bracelet. It’s in the silver baggie too.
I found a few necklaces that must be my mother’s from her teenage years. They are antiqued and really pretty. A few other odds and ends include a small Spirograph piece, the “ST ENDS” half of a Best Friends necklace (I always wanted to BE FRI half, but never had a friend nice enough to let me have it), the emerald stud earrings that I got my ears pierced with when I was a little girl, the little gold cross earrings I wore for my First Communion and the one gold butterfly earring that I still have. The other butterfly flew away one day when I ripped my ear half-off when riding my bike too fast under a rope and turning my head to the side at the perfect moment.
I found two little tiny necklaces that prove that my neck and head were at some point in my life smaller then they currently are (no one thought that was possible). One is from my flower girl days. The second one, I can remember my mom putting around my neck when I was small. It’s a little gold cross with a teeny, tiny pearl in the middle. I could be wrong, but I think I wore it for my First Communion. Finding that necklace is what inspired me to write this story. I can remember being a little girl, having my hair up, and standing facing my mother who was bent down putting the necklace on me. This memory made me cry. It’s hard to believe that I was just a little girl not that long ago. Life certainly moves faster than anything else. It makes me realize that all of the things I’m doing with Sierra and Damian could actually be in there head when they are adults. I realize how important it is that I am a good example to them and really spend quality time with them.
Out of all of those boxes of trinkets, I only found one piece of paper. I don’t know when I wrote these down, but here they are:
Two sure ways to fail:
Think and never do
Do and never think
Our purpose in life is to see each other through, not to see through each other.
Just imagine all of the things you own, lined up in a white room. Your task is to put everything into boxes—stuff you need and stuff you want. It’s surprising to me, someone who goes by “the greatest things in life are not things” mantra, how many THINGS have meaning to me. Every thing that we have means something, or we wouldn’t have it. Deciding which things have
real meaning is the tricky part.
Anyways, I’m gonna get back to the game of “April Donovan—This Is Your Life”. :)
