Parenting Without A License

Rifling Through The Box

Posted by Kimberly on October 14th, 2007 — Posted in Just Like Riding A Bicycle, The Man I Didn't Marry

I’m not a scrapbooker; cutting up pictures and artistically gluing them to acid free paper has never been the way I manage my memories. That’s not to say that I don’t indulge in keepsakes; it’s just that my mementos tend not to fit neatly between two pages. Kind of like life itself.

My reminders might look like an untidy jumble of meaningless bits of paper and random objects, but to me, they are touchstones of immense power; each one of them has the ability to send me back to a specific moment in time. Like most women, since I’ve become a mother these tokens tend to centre around my children–report cards, baptismal candles, special rocks, outgrown toys, and tiny outfits fill the battered shoe box that holds my memories now. But once upon a time I had a different memory box, one covered in rose velvet with a tapestry lid. The box itself was a memento, and inside it contained the story of a relationship told in movie ticket stubs and stray bits of this and that picked up along the way.

I kept that box long after the relationship it chronicled had joined the ranks of memory, moving it with me from apartment to apartment. It was always unopened and tucked behind the Christmas decorations on the top shelf, but there nonetheless. A touchstone of sorts, although of what, I’m not quite certain.

Evidence of another time? Another life? Another girl who had been loved once? Who had done all those things that lovers do, saving the evidence of once upon a time to remind herself that fairy tales do exist, and that the princess doesn’t always have to rescue herself?

Eventually I gave up the box, first delivering it into Kirsten’s safekeeping during a move, and then, on the eve of Regan’s birth, leaving it behind on the curb. It was time to let it go, and I was ready. And yet, even though I haven’t seen it in over four years tonight I find myself thinking about that box.

Not surprising, really. What is surprising is that even though it’s been years since I opened it, I have no trouble recalling many of the treasures inside. A ticket stub from our first date–Jurassic Park. I misunderstood when he asked me out, and he lifted me down off of a wall into a terribly romantic first kiss. A broken knife from a silly lunch with friends. A pebble from the day on the rocks at Presqu’ile and a programme from the Montreal Jazz Festival we never attended on our camping trip that was equal parts heaven and hell. My Miss Saigon ticket–the first musical I ever went to, and still my favourite, even though I was a sobbing mess by the end and he laughed at me. A bit of ribbon from the first piece of lingerie I ever received as a gift. The ring pop he proposed with that left me laughing so hard I could barely say yes. The green apple box the real ring came in (the ring went back to him, but I kept the box). A wedding invitation that was never sent. A wedding gift that was never given.
I can see it all as plainly as though the contents were spread out in front of me and a thousand memories I didn’t even know I had come flooding back. That’s what happens when you open Pandora’s Box, I guess. Everything you’ve been keeping stuffed deep down inside flies out, clamouring for your attention, demanding acknowledgment.