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PEELING THE ONION
Unpacking A Life In Boxes and Bags
A first look at my mom’s legacy
Life in boxes
In the hours after Mom’s funeral, my brother and I sorted through a carload of boxes and bags from her condo, the first excavation of artifacts of her 85 years. She kept everything. Everything. Even my first grade report cards.
Mrs. Brownridge’s spidery script, a full page single spaced. I couldn’t get past the first sentence, but the gist was that I was shy but smart. Sixty years later, the words aren’t worth the onionskin they’re written on; a brief smile, and they’re in the recycle bin.
A box of cassette tapes. Two typewriters. Costume jewelry. Her wedding bands. So much crystal. Somebody else might like it, but we have no use for it.
So many tchotchkes, all worthless, mostly meaningless, sold to her by a “friend,” a taxi driver who extracted not just a fare but a tribute for each ride by selling her junk from his mother’s shop and pocketing the profit.
That white teddy bear I bought her on a layover in Calgary back in the 1980s, the first of a robust collection of plush toys. I put him in my brother’s music studio for now; I have packed light to get here fast and have no way to bring him back this time.
