The Finding of Things That Were Lost
One of the "benefits" of packing up and moving is that you have to unpack on the opposite end. When you are moving from 4000 sq. ft. to 1900, you do NOT get the luxury of stacking boxes in the lumber-room and ignoring them for years, You need all the floor space you can find, so you open and unpack everything and decide whether you really need it.
A few years back in a period of particularly dreckish Sturm und Drang, Carol had occasion to worry about a couple of small things that lived in the bookshelf at the head of my bed. Trinkets, really, but at the time they were some of the few things in the House that were really mine. Four netsuke bears, in walrus ivory, brass, silver, and jade. When the world started to come apart, I was in a week-long class forty miles away, and crashing on the floor of a friend who lived near-by. Carol, looking at the way things were blowing up at Home, took the Bears and put them into the Proverbial "Safe Place" until the smoke cleared.
Five or six weeks later, after People had moved out with Things That Got Packed in a Hurry, we couldn't find the bears. After some months of fruitless searching, we came to the conclusion that the netsuke, and several other items, had gotten mixed up with the Departed's gear and moved off to the wilds of Contra Costa County. Since things were still a bit tight-jawed around the breakup, we didn't have any good way to say 'did you pick up anything extra?", so we let it drop.
Last Thursday, Carol took a day off from Work to run errands in the morning. In the afternoon she was sorting through boxes that had been stored under her bed in the old house. One of the boxes was full of wrapping paper and gift-labels and bows and such. And in the bottom, was a jewel box, and in the jewel box....
A few years back in a period of particularly dreckish Sturm und Drang, Carol had occasion to worry about a couple of small things that lived in the bookshelf at the head of my bed. Trinkets, really, but at the time they were some of the few things in the House that were really mine. Four netsuke bears, in walrus ivory, brass, silver, and jade. When the world started to come apart, I was in a week-long class forty miles away, and crashing on the floor of a friend who lived near-by. Carol, looking at the way things were blowing up at Home, took the Bears and put them into the Proverbial "Safe Place" until the smoke cleared.
Five or six weeks later, after People had moved out with Things That Got Packed in a Hurry, we couldn't find the bears. After some months of fruitless searching, we came to the conclusion that the netsuke, and several other items, had gotten mixed up with the Departed's gear and moved off to the wilds of Contra Costa County. Since things were still a bit tight-jawed around the breakup, we didn't have any good way to say 'did you pick up anything extra?", so we let it drop.
Last Thursday, Carol took a day off from Work to run errands in the morning. In the afternoon she was sorting through boxes that had been stored under her bed in the old house. One of the boxes was full of wrapping paper and gift-labels and bows and such. And in the bottom, was a jewel box, and in the jewel box....