What is your most beloved possession? This question always breaks my heart. If your home was burning, what would you grab? The answer changes with time, of course. Today I would say my cats, my artwork, and my computer (in that order); but my 10 year old self had a much different answer: my behemoth zoo of stuffed animals - not to play with, but to collect. They weren't the coveted Beanie Babies of the 90s, however, these were just regular old stuffies. I bequeathed each of them with special names and distinct personalities, and every morning would line them up on the dilapidated bed my mother called a “taco shell.” She had attempted to throw it out more than once, but was met each time with increasingly severe meltdowns. I didn't care that it was grotesquely uncomfortable and smelled of several generations, it was my bed, the bed that I kept my babies in, and I was not good with change. My beloved taco shell was eventually tossed during the first move, but my mother graciously allowed me to keep the animals.
She tried to explain that they would make some other child happier if I could just let them go, but I was 12 years old and we were moving to an island in the middle of the ocean - away from every person and every place I had ever known, and I couldn’t bear to lose one more thing. So we boxed them all up, and I wept as I kissed each one of their little faces before boxing them up into the dark unknown. The house in Hawaii was so much bigger, but somehow had less space. My sister and I had to share a room again, and our closet was so tiny that the stuffed animals had to go in storage below the house. And eventually, I'm ashamed to say, I forgot about them - out of sight, out of mind. Then one night in the middle of monsoon season, the whole backyard flooded, and water ran up to the porches. The next morning we peeled away the damage one soggy scrap of cardboard at a time, and and that’s when I saw them again: my menagerie was drenched; those boxes full of childhood were drowned. There was no use sending them to a thrift store, my orphans were goners. I should have let them go when they could’ve made someone else happy. I still haven’t forgiven myself for that. When I graduated college, I had made plans to move across the country with this boy. My parents were also moving, from one castle in France to another, and they were tired of lugging around their kid’s shit. It made sense, they were in a new chapter of their lives, and wanted to downsize. But just as I was beginning my adult life, I was suddenly burdened with every childhood belonging I had left. I couldn’t take them with me, so they went into the boy’s father’s basement, somewhere way up north. Last I checked, they’re still up there. In my early 20s I wandered around from one sketchy living situation to another, always leaving piles of belongings in my wake - sometimes out of spite, often out of desperation. I have left behind so, so many things: I lost that leather Harley Davidson jacket I saved up for on eBay, with the embroidered roses, that I bought for my 17th birthday. I lost that delicious perfume in the quilted box my mother got me for Christmas. I lost that cool drawing of the girl eating the starfish, that I tore out of one of my sister’s weird art magazines. I lost my Steinbeck collection that I never read, I lost all the Buffy seasons on DVD, and I have definitely lost my birth certificate. I lost my virginity in Burnaby, I lost my last name in South Bend, and I lost my mind in Colorado Springs. I have left trails of my belongings behind me like breadcrumbs to nowhere, because I have never really belonged anywhere. Traveling between the kingdom and the witch’s hovel, I have no space for possessions. If my arms were full, how could I hold your hand? Or your face? Or a beer? And that word: possessions. To possess something . . . Objects have always had personalities to me, sometimes better ones than people. But things don’t stick around forever, anymore than people do. The kindest thing to do is let them go when it’s time. Don’t leave them in a basement to drown; they deserve better. The ones who want to love them are waiting.
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March 2022
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