For several years a suitcase was resident in our garage. It sat in a corner behind boxes of books and dusty tools, alongside rags and assorted broken appliances, as inconspicuous as any other banished object that normally occupies such a place.
Except this is not true; I know it and, out there, I think you know it too. How many of us have these possessions or reminders of the past, too scared to toss away.
So I chose not to think about this suitcase; because every time I did, with its broken handle and dubious zip, inherited from my mother-in-law long ago, was like wanting to touch a hotplate of uncanniness. It waited to be brought back into the light, daring decisions to be made.
This was difficult: for all my love of recycling functional items and adhering to the ‘bring something in, take something out’ rules of clutter-free living, this alone remained safe. It or, more specifically, more importantly, the contents were off-limits.
At least until the day came when enough bravery was marshalled up so I could manage to go out to the garage and drag the suitcase inside. There it sat, in the middle of the floor. Waiting.
Placing it on its side, tugging the zip around, I flipped open the lid.
There was life. Their lives, as they’d once been. I couldn’t help but make that long-bowed comparisons between Han Solo in his carbonite, trapped, waiting to be liberated. I cracked open the plastic bag and lifted the soft fabrics to my nose, breathing in old scents entwined into the fibres like DNA that neither time nor repeated washing ever removed.
2012 / 2005
Sucking back the smells: the dust, the milk spit up; a hint of baby oil and rash creams. It is as if nothing has changed; I am catapulted back into the past.
There is a simplicity that cannot be denied. Babies press-studded into garments of varying warmth and coverage, at the mercy of external choice. What yet awaited, the phases of wildly clashing ensembles or the preference of wearing the same outfit for four days running, irrespective of its condition, I could hardly guess.
I bundle up clothes between my fingers, scrunch them hard, madly processing the two facts of that was then and this is now, repeating these over and over.
So it is any wonder why, after a time, my daughter crept up slowly behind me and asked what was wrong, why was I crying?
And I, as I sat on the floor, wiping away my tears, could merely say, ‘I was just going through your baby clothes’. It seems so trivial, at the abstract.
2012 / 2004
2012 / 2006
2012 / 2006
Yet I also knew I was saying goodbye to a past I’d only just been able to pull out and examine piece by piece, wondersuit by wondersuit.
And the very thought killed me inside.
But…
But…
I was ready to move on.
So we packed everything back up and took the suitcase and its precious contents to donate to charity. As we left it at the back, a hale young woman wearing black workman’s gloves greeted us cheerily and wished us a good day as she picked it up to take through the double swinging doors. Adam put his arm around me as we turned to leave, and I said my quiet goodbye to the suitcase, wherever it now may be.
