Plastic and Cardboard

Plastic and Cardboard

Spending the day trying once again to clean out many years’ worth of accumulation, starting with the closet. It’s like a large Pandora’s Box, packed with the past, some good, some bad. Dozens of containers, shoeboxes, and envelopes crowd the shelves. Yes, this is probably going to be a weekend event instead of one snowy afternoon.

Removing several boxes at once seems to be a good approach. I have several large cardboard boxes at the ready to help with sorting. One is marked trash (the largest box and probably the least to be used), a box for each adult child and the MUST KEEP box. It’s a shoebox but who am I kidding; I know me so well. And so, I begin.

I bypass the boxes and remove a large manila envelope from a shelf. It’s pictures. Black and white, some sepia toned reminders of days gone by. Grandparents, great grandparents, and unknowns but the images draw you into their world. A picture of my dad probably taken not long after his father and brother died; there is an unmistakable sadness lingering his eyes that must be to be a tremendous weight to carry for a 12-year-old boy. A monotone picture of Mama probably the same age as Daddy was in his photo. Her eyes reveal some inner despair. I have an idea of what her secret was, but I will not put voice to it. The envelope goes to the floor next to the MUST KEEP box.

A few shoeboxes of travel brochures, town maps and festival tickets go into the trash box. Memories will sustain those adventures. More treasure is divided into the children’s boxes; I’m sure they all want to be reminded of the “talks too much” and “does not apply themselves” notes on report cards from the third grade. And who am I to decide if the gold painted macaroni embellished paper plate from first grade is worth keeping another 30 years.

A flat cardboard box contains a heart shaped candy box adorned with a plastic rose and wrinkled gold ribbon. Inside, the Valentine that came with it. I remember the impact it had on my 15-year-old self; the few words printed inside were an undying proclamation of eternal love from my handsome guy with a semi-Beatle haircut. Tickets stubs from drive-in movies, napkins stamped with the names of cheap hamburger dives, an empty bag from a favorite candy he bought for me just because he knew I liked them. How can paper and plastic invoke such memories? Wonder what the kids would think if they found the condom wrapper tucked in among the menus and labels from Ripple? Or the receipt from that motel we checked into on my 16^th birthday because I wanted to make love in a bed instead of the backseat of his car? Yes, we weren’t always gray and fat and shuffling our steps rather than dancing to “Proud Mary” in a drive-in parking lot. We were free and alive with dreams of the future, sunburnt, content, and naïve.

If only the Summer of 69 had lasted forever but the real world was waiting to intrude. Joy, arguments, love, resentment, feast and famine so to speak. Rent, car payments, hospital bills, they were all just around the corner for two teenage parents. Friends and family would come and go and with them secrets and foolishness. Couples would marry. Some divorce. Children would be born; some would die. Life in living color, warts and wrinkles, affairs, crimes of passion, crimes of stupidity. They were all a part of the past 50 plus years. We had been lucky for the most part. We still had all our children but maybe not their spouses they started with. Our grandchildren are beautiful, well adjusted for the most part. Intelligent young people that are heading in the direction of the things that make them happy. A great-grandchild that put a whole new spin our lives when she arrived. We have been blessed.

Fifty years later, here I sit with a still bright red box with an embossed rose hiding under the plastic one, wondering how we made it this long when so many other had failed. The endearing Valentines stopped coming after a few years, but he always told me Happy Valentine’s Day. We traded drive-in movies for Disney movies on the VCR. Hotel rooms gave way to family camping trips. Graduations, weddings, grandchildren started the whole process again. And they never had to visit two houses to see their parents or grandparents.

I look at the heart shaped box and think how the years passed and changed us but the box and what it holds remained the same. Untouched by illness, uncertainty, change. Were we the lucky ones, not to be the same as we were when this life of ours started together? Would we have been better, happier to be the same, to think the same way, to want the same things, to do what we had always done? Wonder what we would have said then if we were given the gift of clairvoyance and could have seen what we would be today if we changed as we have. Would eternal youth and naivety become boring, mundane. It wouldn’t stop us from dying; our 80-year-old hearts would still cease to beat when the time came. We would just look like teenagers. Can’t say what I would have said then but looking back I can say I am glad I did not have the choice. What if I had missed being more compassionate, missed developing my talents, did not expand my world by taking interest in other cultures. I’ll deal with the pounds and wrinkles while I try to understand my grandkids obsession with cell phones and music I don’t like. I feel like it is a worthwhile tradeoff.

This cardboard heart with its plastic rose holds more than the eye can see. It holds a little of who we were and without that we would not be who we are now. It goes in the MUST KEEP box.