In this box, a set of dishes wrapped in shirts I’d forgotten I had.
In this box, stacks of books.
In this box, a set of screwdrivers, a circular saw still covered in sawdust. When was the last time I used it? Building the garden beds. Six years ago in July. I spent a couple days mitering the corners there. I sank four by four redwood piers into the soil, measured and leveled and bolted the mitered two by sixes with square-drive screws. Those beds were built to last.
There are framed photos in this box, and a few folders full of papers I dare not read. In this box the sculpture of Kenyan ebony my parents gave me, a Tarahumara rabbit carved of weightless blonde wood, another nest of bowls.
This box is labeled “What was on the hallway shelves.”
This box is labeled, unhelpfully, “miscellany.” I do not open it.
This box is labeled “Peru.”
A year of dust covers all of it. The door has been open what, three hours since last May? Four? None of those hours open to anything but calm and sun, and yet the infiltrated dust covers it all, has worked its way into the pages of the books inside the boxes that had been on the hall shelves. The evidence of a life, the forensic leavings of a life, each hastily packed pamphlet and three-prong adapter and box of hammers a fossil-in-waiting, the silt cozying itself in around it. Some paleontologist might break open a block of siltstone some million years from now, reconstruct the end of the marriage from the placement of the casts. It had obviously been packed in a hurry, scuffs and nicks in what had been a wooden leg of the Mission settle they once laughed on, the bed where their dog slept. This assortment over here is confusing and anachronistic, paperwork from three distinct decades: it may have been a midden.
In this box, a number of valueless things I once gave her which in the end she did not want.
In this box, the things I took instead of what I wanted.
In this box, the shards of a life that once seemed to matter, the tag ends of feelings I once thought were happy. Somewhere this week a judge put pen to paper, signed his name. What had been real is now official. What had been live is choked in desert dust.
In this box a fine white dog hair sticks out of a book I have not read in years.
This box full to bursting with mistakes I made.
This box bears her voice on the phone, casual and light, describing curtains she was sewing and what she’d made for dinner and oh by the way.
This box I cannot see inside.
This box turned inward on itself, taped hard shut and unlabeled.
This box is empty: odd that I kept it this long.
(o)
“Storage Locker in Barstow” sould be a Nanci Grifith song. Keep the metaphors intact. I’ve got boxes and folders and phone calls just like that.
I found myself choking back tears at the end of this piece, Chris. Tears of sadness, of recognition. I’ve had, and still have a few, boxes like yours. Got rid of most of them after seven years, before moving to a new place to be with a new love. There are still a few left, though, in the dark of the attic, in the dark of my heart.
My dog has been gone a year and a half, and I find her white hairs sticking out of or sticking to something every so often. My yoga mat still has more than a few. Comforting, somehow.
Thanks for such a great piece.
Wow… Um… Wow.
Between repairs and painting, I’ve just spent that past couple of weeks packing up belongings for a move to I-don’t-know-where-yet. It’s been strange, packing thirty-five years of our life together, and deciding which of my husband’s belongings to bring and which to leave behind.
Packed for the move are a few of his favourite jackets which almost feel as though he could be inside each when I hold it in my arms. Not packed are the size 12 slip-on deck shoes he had to wear when the chemo made his feet swell up so badly that he couldn’t wear his hiking boots anymore, or the walking stick seat that he only used a couple of times before he was unable to go for walks anymore.
This packing business can be a sad thing. Yesterday, I spotted this proverb on the signboard outside the local realtor’s office: “A chameleon does not leave one tree until he is sure of another.”
Oh, what do they know.
(o)
I just found this blog through The Clade. Beautiful writing. I am sorry for your pain.
[hug]
And another wow.