something I found
My mother used to collect postcards. She probably had thousands of them. Whenever someone went on vacation they knew to bring her back at least one postcard. From the 60’s through the 90’s she recorded a small history of tourism in big cardboard boxes with each country reserved to a specific manila envelope. I never saw her look through them. She would just say off-handedly, “Pick me up a postcard in Montreal, please.” That’s how I knew they were still there in the closet under a Mickey Mouse stuffed animal we once bought at Disneyworld.
When we had to move because our home was being taken from us, we tried to pack only the really important or expensive things we owned. Mom and my brother left while my father and I stayed behind to finish packing. We had no electricity, running water, and most of our clothes and blankets had been packed up. It rained the whole week before we left. Flashlights and near-death candles were collected in the center of our living room. Eventually all of our clothing was soaked and at night we could not see to pack so we just slept next to our candles flickering sharply as if desperate against the pitch black intensity of our home. The night before we were leaving, I couldn’t sleep and I took one of our flashlights so I could look around and make sure we got everything possible.
My clothes seemed like a corpse around my skin, stiff and cold, unwilling to budge against my body’s movement. The flashlight’s battery was going. It left only a fuzzy yellow-orange circle on the linoleum floor of our kitchen, then bare hallway stripped of photo collages, and my parent’s bedroom door half open. Rain was hitting their window - the large window by their bed which I always adored. Light came in so nicely. So comfortably. It was like an old friend meeting you and saying, “Tell me how you are” with complete sincerity. This friend met me now and understood, underlining the cold and damp interior of my family’s house with pale moonbeams shining through. Rain drops for curtains and music and memory bombs.
I turned from the window and went into their closet. My flashlight found three large cardboard boxes. I thought, perhaps wishful thinking, that maybe they were old sweaters my mom didn’t want anymore. Unfolding the tattered cardboard lid, I saw the manila envelopes with my mother’s handwriting scribbled onto them. South Africa. Barbados. Amsterdam. Moscow. I felt like I had found a buried treasure and couldn’t imagine my mother leaving this behind. I immediately pulled all three boxes out and put them on their old bed. The bed creaked and moaned under the weight, as if it already forgot what it felt like to be rested upon. For the next few hours I sat there going through each envelope in each box. I forgot about my wet clothes or that I was hungry. I forgot that the dim light was making my eyes strain and I was getting a headache.
I separated them into two groups - one group would be taken with me and the other would be left there in the closet. There wasn’t enough room to take them all, not even half of them, so I had to be particular in my choosing. I had to be quick too since we were supposed to be ready to leave in the morning. I ended up bringing only a quarter of her whole collection with me.
……
September 2005
When we had to move because our home was being taken from us, we tried to pack only the really important or expensive things we owned. Mom and my brother left while my father and I stayed behind to finish packing. We had no electricity, running water, and most of our clothes and blankets had been packed up. It rained the whole week before we left. Flashlights and near-death candles were collected in the center of our living room. Eventually all of our clothing was soaked and at night we could not see to pack so we just slept next to our candles flickering sharply as if desperate against the pitch black intensity of our home. The night before we were leaving, I couldn’t sleep and I took one of our flashlights so I could look around and make sure we got everything possible.
My clothes seemed like a corpse around my skin, stiff and cold, unwilling to budge against my body’s movement. The flashlight’s battery was going. It left only a fuzzy yellow-orange circle on the linoleum floor of our kitchen, then bare hallway stripped of photo collages, and my parent’s bedroom door half open. Rain was hitting their window - the large window by their bed which I always adored. Light came in so nicely. So comfortably. It was like an old friend meeting you and saying, “Tell me how you are” with complete sincerity. This friend met me now and understood, underlining the cold and damp interior of my family’s house with pale moonbeams shining through. Rain drops for curtains and music and memory bombs.
I turned from the window and went into their closet. My flashlight found three large cardboard boxes. I thought, perhaps wishful thinking, that maybe they were old sweaters my mom didn’t want anymore. Unfolding the tattered cardboard lid, I saw the manila envelopes with my mother’s handwriting scribbled onto them. South Africa. Barbados. Amsterdam. Moscow. I felt like I had found a buried treasure and couldn’t imagine my mother leaving this behind. I immediately pulled all three boxes out and put them on their old bed. The bed creaked and moaned under the weight, as if it already forgot what it felt like to be rested upon. For the next few hours I sat there going through each envelope in each box. I forgot about my wet clothes or that I was hungry. I forgot that the dim light was making my eyes strain and I was getting a headache.
I separated them into two groups - one group would be taken with me and the other would be left there in the closet. There wasn’t enough room to take them all, not even half of them, so I had to be particular in my choosing. I had to be quick too since we were supposed to be ready to leave in the morning. I ended up bringing only a quarter of her whole collection with me.
……
September 2005