Have you ever put away your winter coat for the season or an old purse, suitcase, etc., and when you finally got around to wearing it again you reach your hand inside and discover forgotten treasure? Sometimes it’s money, sometimes a favorite pair of sunglasses or even just that lip gloss you loved. Every year, I get that forgotten treasure feeling when I drag out winter storage and rediscover my favorite sweater. This year, I was excited and more than a little bit daunted to dig through an entire garage worth of storage and find those beloved treasures we’d hurriedly packed, stored and forgotten for an entire year.
When Jeff deployed to Iraq we knew we’d need to leave storage behind for his return and eventual setting up of his place while I continued to live in Charlotte. Today I visited our storage area prepared to sift through long ago packed boxes of beloved books, favorite winter scarves, maybe even a few cherished mementos that somehow got lost in the packing process. Instead, what I found was the husband’s backpack stuffed to the seams with a wide variety of lost treasure.
When we moved, I packed each box carefully and laboriously labeled the contents and taped up the seams so as not to allow any insects to burrow inside. I packed almost the entire house myself, including much of the husband’s clothes and personal belongings. Jeff had only the last bit of his own things to pack the final weekend before Thanksgiving last year and then it would be done. Why is it that men are such bad packers? It’s not that he packed in a disorganized fashion or that he did not label his boxes, it’s that he combined every scrap of whatever was left, be it trash, treasure or in between and through it in boxes. As an example, I will now divulge the contents of Jeff’s backpack which I dug out of storage today after one year of languishing.
One New York Times newspaper dated April 30, 2008. One NY Times newspaper dated May 15, 2008. Several articles and scholarly papers printed and stapled together on topics ranging from guerilla warfare, the decision to invade Iraq, “Europe’s Tied Hands” and high altitude warfare. One pair winter gloves. One pair ear plugs. An Army issued stress management guide. A half bottle prescription pain killers. My eye drops. Five empty packets of Splenda. Six Simfast Optima snack bars of varying degrees of flatness. Two band-aids, various cold and sinus medications., three throat lozenges, several Emergen C drink powders and a box of “no jet lag” homeopathic pills from our trip to Vietnam two years ago. There was also three plastic bags that once housed the aforementioned NY Times. One empty Ziploc back and one Ziploc bag with a tablespoon or so of mixed nuts left in it. Finally, we come to the coup de grace: a plastic grocery bag with the remains of several moldy, crumbled M&M cookies I baked for him at some point before we moved.
It’s been an interesting and slightly gross walk down memory lane. I am currently debating between disposing of the trash and saving whatever is worth saving or leaving the whole thing to him. I suppose after a year of getting shot at I could do the nice and loving thing, then again, I’m still me. That backpack is going in his closet as a lovely surprise for his return.
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