Packing up my life in boxes is bittersweet. First, it is a chore, the kind that you procrastinate about starting. It’s not a simple task.
I am only six weeks away from my moving date. Knowing that I have a moving date on my calendar is beyond comprehension; it feels real and surreal at the same time.
Looking back at the past I have textbooks from college, children’s books from when I was a pre-school teacher, and young adult books I read as a high school teacher to converse with my students about the latest literary releases. I have books galore. All of these are coming with me.
Boxes, Boxes, boxes. You know the cardboard boxes that are never opened, but shuffled from one apartment to the next, filled with memories, notebooks from classes, and your writings. You couldn’t bear to look through them, but you also couldn’t imagine getting rid of them. Each of these boxes is part and parcel of who we are.
Symphony at Lakeside, Ohio
Ohio State Buckeyes football fall 2006
Shoeboxes full of relationship mementos. Your relationship has endured so long that you have filled several boxes and you keep starting new ones. Each box contains a few years of history. Each box has mementos, concert tickets, wedding and baby shower invites, movie stubs, and one even contains the corsage from your high school senior prom. Long distance love letters from college and birthday cards are in their own box.
More recently the box has obituaries, medical bracelets from your visits, and writings that are only partially written. More recently, work intruded with your time with friends and dates with your boyfriend. The dark clouds took up residence for too long. Writing was the moment in the recent past where you triggered happiness back into your life.
Finally you have acquired international mementos from three trips to Europe, including your favorites which you would love to plan a return visit: Switzerland and Greece. A new box needs to be established as you move on to new chapters of your life. God willing, more positivity will fill the next box.
But the childhood and college mementos are who we are. That is the time in my life I knew who I was the best. Before jobs and responsibilities divided our lives into scheduled moments I said “yes” to everything I had an interest in. Freedom allowed that discovery.
writerundle 