To Tear... or Not to Tear...
That is the REAL Question
Especially when you are Fall cleaning your storage area / garage.
With your 8yr old son.
On one of the most beautiful sunshiny days of Fall break he would "WAYYYYYY rather be doing anything than this Mommy".
{I did not test him on that, but I should have.}
As many of you know, besides being a writer, I am also an Organizer / Personal Assistant. So here goes the very unprofessional confession... I hadn't fully unpacked, sorted, purged, done anything remotely resembling organization with our storage area since I had moved in last year. I literally just closed my eyes while I typed that so I couldn't see the look on your cyber face.
Everything just sitting there in closed boxes, mysteriously labeled in layers of black sharpie on the top of dented box after weathered cardboard box that had sadly been used one too many times moving in the last five years since my divorce. None of it really the stuff I needed, I did unpack those boxes {insert golf clap in 1 - 2 - 3}, however the things I didn't need or didn't want inside the house were all shoved into corners around the perimeter of our "fake garage" as I had called the storage area.
Most of them sad little shells of a box that was once neatly labeled "Guest Bathroom" that had sloppily been crossed out with an almost-dry Sharpie. Another label boldly written half-way over it clearly rushed with forceful handwriting labeled "KITchen" now XX out. And a third time written in upperhand letters, appearing as if the ink was almost willing it to stick this time - "OFFICE".
That's mostly what our "fake garage" contained. The unwanted and unused of my past married life.
That's mostly what our "fake garage" contained. The unwanted and unused of my past married life.
I had grown tired of moving, and clearly unpacking the items I just didn't want to remember. Sure there were huge reasons why I kept having to move my young son and I from house to house like a lost carrier pigeon. The Big D, I was incredibly sick, and because the people I was renting from to re-establish myself after Divorce wanted to sell and didn't accept my offer.
My past on parade. And I simply did not want to face it all in Kodak's finest color bleed glory, especially because I believed I had moved on and risen above it all. Big time. In big band fashion where the cymbal had already come crashing down.
But even in moving on and having "dealt" with it - there are certain parts I believe you should take all the time you need to let it sit in disarray although packaged nicely, because you just don't care to have it under "control"...
Oh say something like all my memories from the walls and shelves of my marital house, I brought my baby home to, sitting in dusty crumpled U-Haul triple taped boxes.
The home I
Never. Ever. Wanted
to leave.
- Filing papers. {Yuck}
- Versions upon versions of separation agreements. {A few had scribbles of choice words that still make me giggle}
- Binders I had made for logs and proof. {Part of the inspiration for The Ex-Wives Guide To Divorce!}
- All the old financial paperwork I killed a tree or six, gathering to copy to turn in to my attorney to determine my financial fate. {Okay... so I killed a forest, but it was a small one and I promise to replant}
Now all that was easy to eyeball and sort through and re-organize now. Because all of these items, if needed to ever dredge up again, where waiting for me tabbed, sorted, and ready to wow even Martha Stewart. Those were the items that elicited NO emotion from me.
However the box with photo safe paper gently cradling the old carefully chosen 8x10 matte snapshots of our no-longer family.... Well that I hadn't been ready to look at, UNTIL NOW, five years later, as I knew a geyser of emotions would bubble from deep within. All of it, laying unstirred in the only box that had NOT been re-packed and re-labeled or opened during all the moves. The box that had been used only once, covered on each side with thin sharpie letters in dark black, saying "Photos - NOT to Open".
The photos I distinctly remember asking myself when packing the first time... To Tear, or Not to Tear.
When packing that small sized box, I knew I was at that point there was just no going back. I tried, more than most ANYBODY I know would have tried to save our marriage with the circumstances I was dealing with. Gut wrenching, keep you awake all night that no amount of reallllyyyy expensive eye cream can fix. I tried. Both the saving of the marriage and the pricey eye cream. Neither worked. {Or gave me my money back now that I think about it?!?}
So why didn't I tear or cut or both those photos originally? Well because my Father had walked away from our family when I was 10 during my parents divorce and I just didn't or wouldn't imagine a world for my son without both parents just "in it." Even when I was in the thick of the divorce. SO I PUT DOWN THE SCISSORS, and packed this box gingerly. Not knowing what life would hold for my son {or myself really!}, but knowing it would not be a life with torn pictures of his past in it.
Because for something to have a future it has to have a starting point,
and although it was not the most ideal,
it was in fact my son's starting point.
All these shiny happy family photos staring me down, thanking me I didn't tear them up, so my son could look back some day. TODAY in-fact. Knowing that despite it all - he was a product of a type of love and had a family that was worth framing at some point. The marriage photos? Well I saved a few for my son {also in this time-capsule of happy family charade} and admittedly burned a few. But that was therapeutic. Very very very therapeutic. Probably made me a better Mommy. Definitely made me a better Mommy.
As I went to close the box, my son walked in after spending 20 minutes getting me more water {stall tacticts at it's finest} and asked me what I was looking at. I held up this old photo and told him bluntly "Old pictures of our family." He walked faster than I had seen him move all day since the start of the cleaning, and grabbed the top photo eyes wide open, mouth cocked to the left.
This photo of us on the beach as the Shepherd Family in Australia right before the "crash". My son just shy of 2 years old. Staring up at the heavens above, as if they were pouring all the light and love into his little body to prepare him for what he was about to face.
My son, still in awe that his convictions deep down inside he did once have a traditional family confirmed, said "Mommy - can I put some of these in my room or give them to my baby some day?". The more sensible side of me wanted to say well that will be a long time because you're not dating until you're 30, but the more sentimental side of me kept my eyes down but replied "Of course my Little Bee."
He then asked me if I remembered all of these pictures and did I know they were "lost" in here? And I did the one thing I hate to do to my son... I lied. Well except when I eat his Halloween candy - lying is totally allowed then.
I lied for the same reason I did not just tear up the pictures in the first place. Because telling the truth or destroying pictures wouldn't be exactly helping honor those old memories and his starting point. And if there is one thing I do want to do for my son, well it's honor those memories that brought him in and up in a world he felt {and still feels} nothing but love.
So although we urge you when going through the "Big D" {Divorce} to get your head quickly out of the sand and help build your own dream sand castle sans Prince Charming, it's okay by me if you have a memory thing or two boxed up and locked until you're ready to face it.
We ALL have a box or two that we need to save until we're ready.
Because most times we find buried treasure in the sand {or "fake garage"} and although you might not want or need it after all in your life, at the end of the day it is still treasure to someone.
Love, Valerie {and Holiday}
