The Things We Carry

Every single corner of the room holds deep, precious memories.

Loving memories.Tender memories.

Every sock, every tissue, every stuffed animal, every rock, every feather, every random piece of Lego holds the energy of a specific moment in time and place.

Every speck of dust. Every worn-out cushion. Every bent fork.

No wonder our house has become a pile of “stuff.”

To the outsider, clutter perhaps.

But to the insider…

Memories.

I get why people take pictures, make photo books, and have albums to collect the memories in a neat and tidy way. To tell story after story based on the photo.

We’ve never been ones to do that.

Our wedding photos are still in a box in a closet somewhere.

Somehow, the photos don’t hold the key the way the objects do.

That blue glass vase—the only one left over from the centerpieces we made for that wedding?

Now that brings to mind images, stories, a felt sense of the moment in a way that no photograph does.

So our shelves are cluttered. Cluttered with these memories.

Not in the form of pictures, but in the form of things.

Each object has a story. Each one smiles.

The peeling paint on the walls—that’s a memory too.

The door that doesn’t close right has stories to tell.

The kitchen cupboard hanging off its hinges makes me smile every time I see it.

At what point, and in what way, is it appropriate to move beyond these memories?

Is it ever?

I sit in wonder at all the things needing to be repaired. At all the piles needing to be sorted through.

It doesn’t feel like attachment, but that would be the simplest label to put on it.

And I’ve always rejected simplification.

Nuance. Subtlety.

Those are my realms.

Perhaps I’m just not ready to let go.

Perhaps the timing isn’t right yet.

Perhaps even in my deepest cleaning and reorganization, in my renewed interest in fixing up our home, I will always secretly leave a wayward sock, a broken Lego, a cracked favorite cup that no longer has a use.

Maybe these are the real treasures?

Not a clean house.

Not a perfectly organized space.

Not a photo-worthy shelf or an impressively organized book collection.

But sweet, small memories that only mean something through the eyes of those who were there.

To witness.

To remember.

To know that this little thing, this seemingly insignificant object, carries an entire world inside it.

And maybe that is what home is, too.