packing elicits awkward emotions

When did I start packing? (quick check of the blog) Oh look, I wrote an entry about it in late September. The password for that one is ‘boxes’, btw. So you’ll be very impressed to know that I have managed a total of 7 boxes. Well, maybe more like 10 if you choose to look at it a certain way, but really, my box-a-day resolution is looking more like a box a month.

The sensible thing seemed to be to start with the “attic” (a closet on the top floor), where we keep stuff we rarely use but never seem to throw away. So I spent a day organizing all my old letters – I used to write actual letters, and people wrote back, how crazy is that? – and was left verklempt. I did a brutal cull of the kids’ old toys, but I had to keep some, for potential grandchildren, for small visitors, for my own memories. That was a nostalgia bomb. How can you be a SAHM for 14 years and still feel that you didn’t get enough time with your kids? Gah.

And today I finished a thing I started weeks ago, before I left for Marrakesh, even: culling, organizing and boxing up all the photos from the days of actual film, so lots of Firstborn, much less of Secondborn. Aaaaand in the process I found old photos from my childhood, and my mother’s, and a whole big lolloping heap of bad memories and old sorrows, which is why this project took so damn long, because Avoidant Me came up with lots of other things that “needed” doing instead (like Facebook?). But today the job was finally done, and I probably do feel a tiny sense of accomplishment, underneath this bale of ancient regret.

Also? While stuffing two boxes of art and photos into the closet, I spotted a Huggies box high on a back shelf? Yeah. More letters and photographs. Dangit. Oh well, on the bright side, I did find my Star Trek action figures.

Song (virus) du jour of the day: Photographs and Memories, by Jim Croce.