Unpacking

I promise I won't detail every single I unpack that I love or that takes me by surprise or that makes me smile or whatever. These things though...these deserve mention.

See, not only am I unpacking the things that were in the Boston apartment, I'm also unpacking things that came from the house dick-boy (my new, well-earned name for my ex-husband) and I shared and, most importantly, things that were sent to me when my mom and bio-sister packed up the house in Virginia after my dad died and mom moved West. And, oh, the things I am finding...

My mom has given me most of my grandmother's china, crystal and silver. The woman had impeccable taste. Impeccable (if an odd penchant for collecting crystal salt and pepper shakers.) Glass bottles, gorgeous silver that shines through the tarnish of being in boxes for too many years, etched glasses, bone china... Each piece is amazing and makes me wish more and more I had known her. I am determined to clean it all up and USE IT! I don't believe in "saving the good stuff." And it displays beautifully in her mother's china hutch!

Several other boxes include things from my dad's desk. When he died, he had an extensive fiction library and was a big enough science fiction fan that he actually left books by different authors to each of his children. I got the Asmiovs and the Heinleins. So I was expecting those. What I wasn't expecting was to be able to smell him when I opened the boxes. Just a drift that was gone almost as soon as I smelled it. But there he was. Right there with me, laughing and happy the books were home.

The other thing I wasn't expecting was how much of my childhood he had kept. In a box with other stuff from his desk were just about every card I had ever given him ~ including one with my mother's handwriting reading "Love, Pobble" under my scribble from when I was too young to even write. A project on the 50 states from 5th grade. Papers I had done particularly well on my freshman year in college. You get the idea.

I also found prom pictures from 1987. There are Nemeria and myself, dressed in our best 80's small town rebel garb (think Flock of Seagulls for her and Laura Branigan for me) and the young men we fancied ourselves in love with. Nemeria and I are still together. Couldn't tell you what happened to the guys. But there we are.

So, as I unpack, I'm laughing and crying and talking into my empty apartment to all sorts of people ~ some of whom are actually here and some of whom are long gone. It's like Christmas morning with a dash of old-blue-jeans-comfort thrown in. And while there is definitely some melancholia in there, mostly it's just ... good.

Those are Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.