May 8, 2015
I used to collect things when I was a child: maple leaves, stones, stamps, post cards, puppy figurines and my little ponies. My mother collected teacups, mostly because loving relatives thought she should collect teacups and gave them to her. I think it's a common human behaviour to collect things. From the examples I had around me, some part of me though that it was the epitome of success to be surrounded by nice things, probably fed by my sparse upbringing. I didn't have one tenth of the toys in my childhood as my own children do and as few as I had, my parents had even less. My mother, who had five brothers reminded us often how all of their toys fit into a cardboard box. She never did tell us how big the box was. I hope it wasn't the same cardboard toy box my grandma sent us to find when we visited. It was pretty small.
Being a little older and hopefully much wiser now, I have learned that having a bunch of trinkets decorating your space means more time spent moving and wiping down these dust collectors. It takes time to have collections, time I would much rather commit to something else, something more precious. After all as I get older, it seems time is the most precious commodity of all. As a mother, wife, living being that requires food, water, exercise and time for sanity just to take a long relaxing breath in and out, after household chores, caring for family members, making time for reading and writing and hopefully some sewing. Some days that's all the time there is and most days I have to scurry like a squirrel to get through it. Who wants to be dusting knick a bric?
Perhaps it's the longing to hold onto something good in the past. I am a very visual person and just seeing an item or a photo usually brings back a flood of warm fuzzy associations and creating the sense of being rooted that so gratifyingly relieves the pressure of the present world which feels as if it could at any time be upheaved, leaving my life dumped out like a baby with the bathwater. Although over time I have learned that the memories don't need to be purged along with item and in some cases, it's been good to let go of certain items because it does allow for a release of some moments in my life that I would rather not hang on to. (Especially those awkward junior high years.) Those moments for good or bad have helped shape who I am, but aren't moments I want to relive. Does that mean I am a self-confessed recovering packrat?
And then there's all the things I dream of doing if there's a spare moment: improving my french, studying a little psychology, reviving my calculus skills, digging up my studies from yesteryear, from that other life I left so long ago. Priorities change by necessity. Career got set aside because of cancer and then again for a child with health issues. The intellectual me got sat upon a shelf in the name of survival, partially due to fatigue and partially coping mechanism. It's better not to dwell of what was given up, rather focus on what's needed in front of your nose so you can keep going day to day.
Problem is, in the last few years, like water surging on, trickling down the path of least resistance, the walls I have built up, are crumbling. The dam is cracking and no longer can I deny that side of me, nor my own disappointment of what my life is versus what I thought it would be back then. But with the construct of time, I am but a fixed vessel travelling along a stream. My little boat has been sent through the rapids and spun round in a few eddies and I can't go back. All that I have is the present and so with the grace of God go I and try to make what I can of where I am.
The word "Erleben" is german for to experience. It returned to me one day as I realized I had let my german lie stagnant, silently decaying away in the dark of subconsciousness, losing its lustre with each passing day, details fading into the barest of passive comprehension. I was listening to a piece of german opera music, and the word "Erleben" popped into my head and I knew what it meant without trying to recall. It's funny how with the right stimulus, what I thought was gone, I find isn't lost at all. Forget the stuff, the greater value is the experience, the memory. Do I really need souvenirs to hold onto the moments I treasure? (I don't know the history/l'histoire du mot, but souvenir is French for to remember.) Isn't that what really matters in the end after all, the experience?
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