We visited the old Time Capsule from Hell today.
The storage unit is half-empty now, with many things gradually reclaimed or tossed. It’s also accumulated a fair amount of contemporary things I think I’m supposed to keep, like the box the microwave oven came in, plus a big pile of computer gear. In this regard it’s not so much a repository of the past, and that helps to lower the tension.
What we’d come to get carried a heavy emotional charge: my wife’s English grandmother’s cherry dresser, her other grandmother’s oak commode (low cabinet), and a large cedar chest from her first marriage. The dresser had always been in our bedroom until we moved here eight years ago, and the cedar chest in the attic, where it served as the focal point for seasonal clothing transfers. The commode is special and used to be in her parents’ home, but at the moment I can’t tell you how we got it. The point is that all these things carry heavy female mojo, in addition to being beautiful furniture pieces with great character. They would anyway, you understand, but now the symbolism is amplified.
To bring these things to our rented adobe home, a full two years after my honey moved back to Taos, is no small thing. Why did it take so long? I don’t know. I used to think I did, and maybe I was close. But I don’t conjecture now, if I can help it.
So there we were with my truck. She’d suggested having movers do it, but naturally I said no. This is what ’87 Ford F-150s are made for, after all. As I unlocked the storage unit door and bent down to grab the rope handle, I felt an uncharacteristic calmness and realized that I was having a good time. A very good time. However, after we’d wrestled the cherry dresser into the back, I didn’t feel so confident. My wife is tough but small for doing that kind of work. What would it be like getting these things into the house over rocks and wide adobe steps? Just being in the general vicinity of the storage unit was already affecting my emotions. I was sure she’d freak out when we finally drove into the dusty driveway and faced getting the furniture into the house. Freak out and take it out on me, no sir. Enough of this, let the movers do it.
“CHANGE OF PLAN!” I hollered from the back of the truck, then climbed down to explain. She met me with a piercing stare and drawn-up shoulders. It was like being confronted by a giant eagle.
“NO!” she shouted sharply. “This is my day, and this is what I’m doing!”
Amazingly, I had no reply. She said a few more things I don’t remember and went back to work. Fine, I said to myself, we’ll do it her new way. The way I convinced her to go because I had a truck, and she went with it, just like the way we blew everything up to come out here and she went with it, quitting a tenured teaching job because it was the only way to get here in a hurry like I wanted to.
She was here, now, to gather her special things and bring them home. I would be the muscle and the grease. I was still having a good time and paid attention, and we got it done. The grandmothers and most of her clothes were in the bedroom now, and I left her alone for a while.
She did some quick arranging and called me in to see, wondering aloud what it was that made her want to cry.
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