There were boxes. Wall to wall and floor to ceiling in the single-car garage. After arriving at my parents' new home we relaxed for a few minutes, letting the drone of the highway fade away, and then went to work. "Where would you like this?" "Should this go in the Salvation Army pile?" "How would you like these arranged?" "I think we will need to build some shelves." Boxes opened. Boxes emptied. Boxes flattened and taken outside. And slowly, like the tide receding to reveal a beach, a garage began to emerge.
Periodically a box would surface that would only be pushed aside -- one, and then another, and another; ones that bore my name. These we worked around.
Through the weekend we worked, and then beyond; calling it a day, only to find second winds that drew us back to the garage for more cardboard spelunking. By Wednesday only two towers remained: one for the Salvation Army, and one for me. Stuff from my old room. Stuff from my old story. Stuff from my old dresser and bulletin board and closet and desk. Remnants. Tracks of my life. Memories. Some of it, Mother had guessed, was disposable but she hadn't wanted to presume. There was a poster board ping pong tournament bracket from some church camp past that demonstrated my championship run. There were theater posters from the plays I had been in -- along with the scripts to support them -- going back to The King and I in 5th grade. There was boyhood jewelry and scrapbooks and high school annuals. There were my little boy cowboy boots probably 45 years old, and my first snare drum, and the ukulele on which I had entertained thousands with my own rendition of Tiptoe Through the Tulips. Well, dozens anyway. There was my 7th grade Texas History spiral notebook from Mrs. Burleson's class in which I had dutifully recorded that the textbook, among other pieces of vital information, had been published by Steck-Warren. There were my various high school awards, some college Dean's List certificates, and my acceptance letter to seminary. And there was one box filled almost entirely of shoeboxes.
Shoeboxes. Intrigued, I gingerly withdrew one and removed the top. Inside, and likewise inside the several others, were letters. Letters and cards. Several were from people now lost to my memory. Camp friends, I discovered, who wrote to keep in touch. Camp counselors, a few of them, writing to appreciate our small group time together. There were even a few from teachers who had become special to me along the way, who wrote to me in college, whose thoughtful notes made me fall in love with them all over again.
And others. Shoeboxes of others. From Kristi Kesey, my kindergarten girlfriend who faithfully kept in touch even into college; from Belinda and Mary and a handful of others. For reasons I no longer remember, I had saved them -- carefully, envelope and all -- perhaps anticipating that from time to time I might need some affirmation. Love letters, for lack of a better description. Neither scented nor grandiose, they were simply the loopy handwriting of innocent affection. Randomly rereading them I noted how mundane is the vocabulary of love -- glimpses of the weather, tidbits of family vacations, activities of the day -- narrated threads with which was woven the fabric of affection. How else does one communicate another's significance, after all, than by including that other squarely in the midst of one's own ordinariness?
I read -- tenderly, appreciatively, fondly, melancholically -- and ultimately moved on. There were bigger boxes remaining, and limited trunk space for the journey home.
And finally the job was essentially done. The trash had been collected, the truck had picked up the donations, pictures were on the wall, shelves had been added, flowers were in the planters, and order had been created. Out of the raw materials of a handful of rooms and a hundred or so boxes a home had been created. Eleven days after driving into the driveway, Daddy raised the door on a now-empty garage and proudly moved the car inside. It was, he observed, a happy punctuation point to the experience. Our own car precariously loaded, we exchanged goodbye embraces, swallowed hard, squeezed ourselves into the reserved spaces, and found our way back to the highway.
One chapter ended, another begun, and a lifetime retraced in between. Now all I have to do is find a new place to store all the memories.
No comments:
Post a Comment