Today is a weird Wednesday. It’s a day of transition and oddness, and I feel it in everything: a creeping cold in my throat, forgotten shower hooks that I had to go back to the store for, people asking for money on the street, cars honking more than usual. A bird pooped on my windshield, and the poop was red-brown, and now I wonder if it was menstruating, and can birds bleed that way? It has been, quite simply, strange. I think it’s because it’s a day of transition.
I’m moving into a new house with dear friends today, giving pause to the comfort of this childhood home where I’ve gotten to resettle for the last little bit of time. Today, I moved out my high school bed, a bed that held many a high school make out session, has heard endless late night phone calls, and held me through lots of my teenage sorting of feelings. When I lived in Phoenix, I had used other furniture, so this is the first time I’ve actually moved out my old high school bed into a new place. Underneath this bed, I found something quite unexpected: my pink plastic suitcase.
Beauty and the Beast are painted on the top. There’s purple handle and a border that goes all the way around. Inside, a Bitty Baby doll, one of those babies that came out with American Girl Dolls, was waiting, half naked, to be played with. A whole world of remembering, stashed away for decades, hidden in the shadows of a bed. I remember using that suitcase to visit my Aunt in downtown Chicago when I was probably five and she was younger than me now– what a mental shift in age. I used this suitcase for sleepovers and to stash important things.
So much has changed since those days of dressing up for a sleepover with my Aunt, carrying a little suitcase to hold what mattered most. Back then, I’m sure, my blanket and Puppy, perhaps some books to capture how I felt about the world. All of these objects bear witness to us, and stay, as columns, as everything else shifts around. It’s a strange sort of sweetness to imagine this suitcase giving me the power of growth, of transition, of journeys while sitting under my bed all those years.
A suitcase. Something that has become so the norm in my life. Something that has become more of my home than a bed, in some cases. I could not have predicted that back then, twenty-five years ago, when I was first adventuring out to stay in a home away from mine, even if it was just for a night. There is so much that I could not have known about my life, how it would be now, and what I’d be drawn to. There’s still so much I cannot imagine, thinking twenty-five years ahead, to where I will be. Fifty-five then. What a beautiful age to hold to.
A friend recently told me that turning fifty is when everything makes sense. Thirty feels grounding, but also opening. Rediscovering an old suitcase helps me to see just how much change has happened. It invites me to speak back to that young one within, the little girl about to explore, and kiss her straight bangs and her golden striped hair and tell her that there is so much ahead of her. And, I suppose, applying that same love to me now, I’ll ask for my fifty-five year old self to do the same. Reach down through the ventricles of time to give me a little forehead kiss, a hug, a pat on my shoulder. To remind me there are so many things I cannot even imagine that are yet to be done. But not to worry. All in its own time. Just pack your suitcase, and be as prepared as you can.
