By: Marlene Oxender
My friends who were successful at downsizing made it happen by moving into another home. That’s all it took. Moving.
Boxing up everything we own is a big deal. Unboxing everything is an equally big deal. We’re given the chance to examine each item – once while it’s being packed and again when it’s unpacked. Decisions are made to keep it, toss it, or find a new home for it.
After the kids are grown and moved out of the house, our closets are full of items that tell the story of what was important over the years.
Dance costumes mean there was a dancer in the home. Fishing poles mean someone liked the quiet of the great outdoors. Every home ends up with a unique collection.
Although we may try to own less stuff, the joy of finding a little treasure at a second-hand store or antique mall often wins, and we add another item to our collection. Garage sales can be a fun place to shop – especially if we’re out for the day with friends.
I’ve told my daughters I plan to leave a lot for them to sort through. They’ll have fun reading the old newspaper clippings that are proof they grew up in a small town. And they are going to want some of their refrigerator artwork as well as their grade cards.
After our mother passed away, my siblings and I gathered for weeks on end to clean and sort through the house we’d grown up in. We needed a ladder to reach some of the boxes that’d been stored in the huge closets in our parents’ bedroom.
Mom’s collection included boxes of old buttons. Old military memorabilia. Old stuff that falls into the unwritten rule that many people from her generation followed: Don’t throw it away.
As each cardboard box was opened, I hoped for good stuff. Stuff I could write about. Or things that a sibling would take home with them – thus not requiring a decision.
Had I known we were going to find two small stuffed alligators that Jeanette and I had received when we were little girls, I would have recorded the moments when my sisters opened the box in which one of them had been stored for half a century.
I was in the other room when I heard a loud gasp. Then another. Then questions about what is in that box. Followed by suggestions that someone else put their hand on that item and lift it from the box.
Jeanette and I were young girls when we each received a baby alligator. They were gifts to us. Jeanette had used a crayon to write her name on the outside of the box. The alligator was in pristine condition because little girls don’t play with things like that.
A photo of Jeanette’s long-lost alligator was texted to her. She wrote back to tell us she didn’t want her alligator, and we were to give it to a child who’d have fun playing with it.
I knew it would take a few minutes before the second box, with my name on it, would be handed down by the person standing on the ladder. And it was – a box with my name on it is once again in my possession.
I agreed we should find a new owner for the alligators, and they ought to be played with. I took them home and placed them on the coffee table until I found someone who wanted them.
Over the next few weeks, the alligators became a conversation piece, and I was starting to become attached to them. I remember thinking I’d just leave them on the coffee table. They were mine now.
I walked past them one day and found they’d been pushed together – almost in a loving pose. I took a picture and decided it was time to find a place for them to reside in my home.
Since they fit nicely in front of the books on the shelves in my library, I moved them to their new perfect place. But every time I walked past them, I was reminded of the reason why they’d been stored in a box: Girls don’t want to decorate with reptiles.
So fifty years after my mother had packed the alligators into their original box, I did the same thing. I used a step stool so I could reach the place where they’d be tucked away. Where heat and humidity would not affect them. Where they could reside until someone unpacks them once again.
A few years ago, I wrote about ostriches after finding a poem that’d been sent to my sister from our neighbor Verna Gabriel.
My online newsfeed picked up on the fact that I was interested in ostriches and continued to send articles through. Now I’m seeing plenty of interesting stories about alligators.
When we were children, we often called our friends an alligator after telling them we’d see them later, and they called us a crocodile in reply. And that may be the most any of us knows about alligators and crocodiles.
Those of us who write nonfiction never run out of writing prompts, for life is full of them. We just notice the ordinary things to be amazed by and start writing.
Fiction writers, on the other hand, need ideas. They must come up with storylines such as talking with animals, or keeping an alligator as a pet, and off they go with their story.
At the end of our life, we’re all just one big story. We’ve lived all the moments we were meant to live. We’ll tell our loved ones we’ll see them later. They’ll tell us it may be a while, for they need to finish writing their story.
And so it goes – we’re separated for a while. We live with memories. With serendipities that make new memories. With a light that makes everything look different. With a bond that cannot be broken. With the promise of seeing each other later.
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Marlene Oxender is a writer, speaker, and author. She writes about growing up in the small town of Edgerton, her ten siblings, the memorabilia in her parents’ estate, and her late younger brother, Stevie Kimpel, who was born with Down syndrome. Her three published books, Picket Fences, Stevie, and “Grandma, You Already Am Old!” are available on Amazon. Marlene can be reached at mpoxender@gmail.com