Keepers

Last night we went to a party (at the house where I lived just three months ago and it was weird - I was a guest, not a host - and the cats ran away from me as if I were a stranger) and a discussion began about what would happen if you lost all your belongings in some sort of catastrophe. Would it be a freeing experience? Releasing you from all ties that bind. Would it be a painful experience? The photographs, the knick knacks, the bed you slept in every night -missing.

Biker Boy kind of likes the idea of being able to start over. I think he's just intrigued by the idea that he could get a new wardrobe and tailor it to a more professional life.

I can't imagine. Just looking around my office right now, I can't imagine life without the mug on my desk. It's a mug holding pens, markers, and two pairs of scissors. It has a Viking on it and says Tri-County Viking Band. It is what you earn at my high school for your six years of work and dedication to band (my clarinet has not been removed from its case in ten years - my clarinet I could live without). This mug is a daily reminder of the hours of work. The years of work. It is also a daily reminder of the best times I had in high school. Running laps around the practice field when we screwed up. Still not knowing the Star Spangled Banner by my senior year. Really. I never memorized it. Silly. That stupid competition at Kenowa Hills with the muddy field where AP lost her shoe in the mud and our uniforms were so filthy they had to go to the dry cleaners twice. The lectures and lectures from our director about how music would make us better at everything else in our lives. LM and RH making out on the bus. They are married now and expecting their third child. It's all in that mug.

I have three wooden blocks on my bookshelf that spell out the first three letters of my name. It's a nickname no one can call me. Except for my Bestest Friend. My first year at grad school, she bought these blocks for me as a birthday present. Everytime I look at these blocks, I think of her. I think of her brand new baby boy. I think of how we lived together that summer of 1999. We bought that gecko. We had no idea how to take care of it. We had that damn jar of grape jelly in the fridge even though we both hated it. We would wait to hear that train go by at 10:30 before we could go to sleep. Putting on dark lipstick and black eyeshadow for a trip to the club. The excitement when she got her first real job. The stab of pain in my heart when I hugged her for the last time before I left for Minnesota. The stab of envy I felt for her husband the day after her wedding when he got to go home with her and I got on a plane to leave her. The happiness when her mom called me to tell me that the baby was born and was perfect and Bestest Friend was a trooper and had made it through. I picture Bestest Friend gleefully going through a box of old blocks looking for those three letters, knowing it would grate my nerves, but knowing I'd put them up anyway, because she is the only one who can call me that. When I look at those blocks, it's all there.

There's a collage on the wall. A collage of pictures my sister made for me before I left for college. It's mostly pictures of our pets. And there's one of my dad sound asleep with his arm around the dog. The only two times I have ever seen my dad cry were at my grandmother's funeral and when he came back from the vet's office after having to put that dog to sleep. There are seven pictures of the dog my sister had to take to the vet's office to put to sleep last week. There are pictures of us in the old house I grew up in. Sometimes the memories of that house are haunted, but sometimes I look at those pictures and I know my parents did the best they could. My sister's senior picture. She took it with the dog. The panic in her face when she came home from school and saw that the dog had been hit by a car. Can you tell we love our dogs? I have moved this collage dozens of times. I've had to replace the frame four times. Once I broke the glass when I moved across state lines. Once I nicked the corner and I was scared the glass would fall out. It was the first thing we put on the wall when we moved in to this apartment. It's all there.

There's a little stuffed dinosaur on my bookshelf. Biker Boy gave this to me when I was sick once. Right when we first started dating. Most people give me pigs. And that's awesome. I love pigs. But the fact that he didn't get me a pig, but felt that this green dinosaur would make feel better, says so much about how much Biker Boy understands me. That dinosaur has two orange ridges on its back and has no nose. I love it. We had just started dating when I got horribly sick. BB brought me Nyquil. He watched Babe with me. He moved my truck during a snow emergency without a shovel or four wheel drive. He put his arm around me when I cried because I just wanted to be well again. He bought me a green dinosaur.

If I was absolutely forced to give these things up, of course I would. I still have those memories. But life would be a little less rich without the daily reminders of all the people who I love and cherish and couldn't live without.