Going through Boxes
It’s now close to the end of September, and I am not proud to say that I have yet to fully move into our apartment.
I’ve been going through my boxes piecemeal. In the process, I’m reliving the many times I’ve moved from one apartment to another, one room to another, or one country to another. I’m going through files of stuff from those frenzied last days of packing and moving when I didn’t have time to go through documents and essay outlines and concert stubs and photos and just stashed them all in one folder. It stuns me at least a little that for some of these things, it’s taken me a decade to find the time to sort through them. I wonder when the next time such thorough cleaning and tidying will happen again.
I often stop to read things. Notebooks filled with notes from sociology and political science classes during my STINT year (together with lists the team made of movies to watch together), notes I made while in Yunnan on Tibetan culture, Bible verses on post-its from the many rooms I’ve occupied over the last 7 years, old boarding pass stubs, ancient to-do lists (and to-do lists from my first year teaching at DGS), school projects, journals, bits of poems written on receipts and napkins, recipes torn out from magazines. These things slow me down.
And I suppose I do want to be slowed down – to relive those stages and savor those summers when I had time to make reading lists, those months when I was frazzled about settling back in Hong Kong, the years when I relished doing schoolwork well.
But inevitably, a large portion of these things will have to be thrown out, recycled, given away, so that our newly-wed lives will actually fit into this little apartment. Surprisingly, I’m not mourning as I shed many of my belongings and keepsakes. After all, it’s to make room for something better.
And that’s a good metaphor for marriage.
I’ve been going through my boxes piecemeal. In the process, I’m reliving the many times I’ve moved from one apartment to another, one room to another, or one country to another. I’m going through files of stuff from those frenzied last days of packing and moving when I didn’t have time to go through documents and essay outlines and concert stubs and photos and just stashed them all in one folder. It stuns me at least a little that for some of these things, it’s taken me a decade to find the time to sort through them. I wonder when the next time such thorough cleaning and tidying will happen again.
I often stop to read things. Notebooks filled with notes from sociology and political science classes during my STINT year (together with lists the team made of movies to watch together), notes I made while in Yunnan on Tibetan culture, Bible verses on post-its from the many rooms I’ve occupied over the last 7 years, old boarding pass stubs, ancient to-do lists (and to-do lists from my first year teaching at DGS), school projects, journals, bits of poems written on receipts and napkins, recipes torn out from magazines. These things slow me down.
And I suppose I do want to be slowed down – to relive those stages and savor those summers when I had time to make reading lists, those months when I was frazzled about settling back in Hong Kong, the years when I relished doing schoolwork well.
But inevitably, a large portion of these things will have to be thrown out, recycled, given away, so that our newly-wed lives will actually fit into this little apartment. Surprisingly, I’m not mourning as I shed many of my belongings and keepsakes. After all, it’s to make room for something better.
And that’s a good metaphor for marriage.
I love going through old writings of mine... I hope you guys are doing well. Enjoy the new year!
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