Posted on November 2nd, 2012

After I sold my condo in Boston’s South End … and after I left my law firm (some would say ‘retired’) and essentially made myself unemployed … and after I sold my mother’s house in Chatham, Massachusetts, I rented an apartment on Upton Street – only two blocks from where I’d spent over 30 of my best (and, I’ll admit, most promiscuous) years. I live there now.

But I’m getting ready to move again … and I just realized how much of my “stuff” has been sitting in storage in brown corrugated boxes with the moving company’s logo – Gentle Giant - printed on the side. I knew in general, somewhat abstract terms what’s there - lots of books, old tax returns, sweaters and jeans I don’t wear any more, a metal fan, a space heater, and maybe some kitchenware - but I couldn’t remember exactly … and it dawned on me that none of it matters to me any more. Except for the artwork and my dog-eared copy of Turgenev’s “Torrents of Spring,” it didn’t matter if I never saw any of it again.

The artwork I missed and wanted back in my life. But the books, the boxes of ‘love letters’ from boyfriends whose names and faces I only vaguely remember and the charming notes and cards sent to me at summer camp by my father and the needlepoint pillows made for me by my grandmother … it’s all just a lot of stuff … and none of it matters unless you insist on having it with you on a shelf, on a wall, or in a drawer. But when you live without it, it’s as if it were gone - poof! - up in smoke, never to be seen again. Or missed. Or thought about.

After all, if you can’t remember “it,” then it’s not ‘there’ for you. Even if it’s something important - like when you fell in love for the first time, or who you decided to marry, or where you go to work in the morning, or even whether you take sugar in your coffee in the morning – if you don’t remember something, then by definition it’s gone. It’s packed in a brown cardboard box and stacked in a storage facility, like the cavernous, anonymous warehouse in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It's also in your brain.

But memories can also come back, as I discovered when I started to re-pack the storage boxes and inventory of their contents. You fold back the ears of a box and grab something – like my grandmother’s mechanical bank - wrapped in tissue paper. Inside the paper is a story; it’s one I’d forgotten. Turns out the memory wasn’t gone, after all. It was only wrapped in tissue paper and hidden inside a cardboard box. Recovering memories - the things wrapped in tissue paper or newspaper - is like rubbing the magic lamp to make a genie appear: do it the right way and – poof! – something happens … and the possibilities are endless.

I’ve got lots more boxes to unpack; the task is both tedious and fun. These re-discovered memories remind me of who I’d been. Every time I unwrap something, I have to hold it for a few minutes and remember why I have it or why I saved it. But they also make me wonder if I’m still that same person … or if, as I grew up, I somehow changed in ways I don’t yet understand … and maybe – just maybe - that’s why none of it matters to me anymore.