
I'm taking a break from putting things into boxes. Not only because I'm a bit tired and need a breather, but also because a little while ago, I took a few things out of boxes.
I have a box that I'm keeping for a friend. It's a box of evidence of a relationship. I've had it for years now, and I've never really looked at it, but today, while I was evaluating what, from my life, to keep and what to discard, I was drawn to the small cardboard box of mementos. I flipped through. All in all there wasn't much, but there was a large stack of communiques of various types, neatly stacked.
I didn't read the emails. I didn't want to or need to. I was already struck with how meticulously clean they were. They didn't seem to be folded or crumpled or to show any other marks of mishandling. They were pristine except for occasional stray notes, doodles, and periodic underlining of the text. It surprised me that my friends had been able to organize these aspects of his life so delicately, ultimately making it possible, then, to put it all into a single box to be given to someone else for an indefinite period of time.
I simply don't function like that. It's hard enough for me to keep my financial information in the same place where I could be expected to find it within five minutes. But I couldn't decide to be jealous of my friend's ability or glad that I lacked it. On the one hand, having that information organized, one can always refer back to something. On the other hand, always having the information at hand means, in a physical, or perhaps geographical, way, being unable to forget. There's always something there to remind you.
I have mementos from past relationships. A few are on display, like the only picture I have of a girl from Montana, but most are hidden behind, around, below, within the maze of information that is around me at all times. And it's times like this, when I'm moving or cleaning or otherwise sifting all of my possessions, that these physical memories, stored outside of my brain, come back through my fingertips and speak.
Somewhere in that room, or possibly in boxes somewhere that I packed months ago, there is a picture of an old ex-girlfriend, exer than Ex. She's in high school, getting ready for, I think, Homecoming, wearing a green dress and looking lovely despite an obvious weariness in her eyes with the process of having her parents photograph her before the dance. Attached to it is a photograph taken of the two of us in Georgetown on some night out with a group of friends. I'm wearing a winter coat and my insulated arms hold her close; her black leather (faux-leather?) jacket wraps around my arms as well, and the dark clothing with the night flash makes her clear face luminous beneath mine. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll hold it in my hand and remember when I held her in my arms, when I fell in love, when we studied together and I couldn't stop staring at her pale shoulder, off of which her shirt had slipped, when we first kissed, sitting on a bench on the Washington Mall, when I cried, when she embarrassed herself and my friend in front of me while drunk, when she lied to me. And when I find it, as I always do, I'll ask myself whether I should simply let it fall away from me, into a dustbin and out of my life. And when I find it, as I always do, I will place it carefully into whichever pile I've designated for things that I'm not sure what to do with, where it will be covered by stray notes, or postcards, or newspaper clippings until I find it again.