Harried Morning

So yesterday when I left, I reserved the computer for another two hour block of time this morning, bright and early at 10am... right when the library opens so as not to run the risk of having to sit there and watch some other person use up my time if they don't log off right away. Also, this time was good because I close tonight at work, which means that I can come in here, get my stuff done and still have time to go home and finish cleaning my apartment before I have to leave. I did not count on packing until 1:30ish in the morning and not being done. See here's the thing. I am incredibly attached to my stuff... Not really the stuff I bought for myself, but the stuff that has been given me over the years by others. I try to NEVER throw any of it away. The result of this is three boxes full of memories that I had to sort through. Who am I to decide which memories are worth more than others? After pretty much just moving piles from one place to another without sorting anything Out of them, I gave up and did some more weeding of CDs, books and movies. Also, I kept coming upon Painful memories, that I didn't really want to face but had to because I am not exactly organized in my packrattiness. I have Abbott stuff all over my room, and it seemed that with every box I opened to sort through I was having the air sucked out of me with the sight of something *else* that I saved from around the time when he died--his name badge, his cafe name tag, the paper his father gave me with his California address, the directions to the memorial, a note I wrote but never gave him....you get the idea. It was awful. Even sitting here thinking about it, I'm getting choked up. The hardest part, though, didn't have anything to do with Abbott... It was a memory of my Grandma, who passed away a few years ago. I was going through my closet, and emptying out this backpack that for the life of me I couldn't remember why I had saved. There was an itch in my brain telling me that it was important, but I couldn't think why. I was still in a bit of a daze from the last Abbott memory that had sprung out at me. I was pulling old papers and just... junk that I had saved (for some reason there was an entire pocket filled with old straw wrappers and rubber bands. I just don't understand myself sometimes) when my hand closed around something small and smooth. In a flash I knew EXACTLY why I had saved that backpack and left it pretty much untouched over the years. I yanked my hand out of the pocket and scooted back against the wall. I sat there staring at the bag for what felt a little bit like forever, trying to get my nerve up to put my hand back in the pocket and take out the object that was inside. My eyes were stinging from the tears I couldn't quite let myself cry (and am willing away as I type this). I knew what was in the pocket. It wasn't a horrible object. In fact it was something that was originally meant to give me comfort. After all, my Grandma had kept it for most of my life. When I was four, I was living in a small town in Idaho and was about to move to Alaska. The night we left, my Mom took me over to my Grandparents house so we could see them one last time before we moved. While the grown ups were busy talking in the other room about boring grown up things, I was completely happy to sit in my Grandmother's kitchen (one of the coziest places in the world) and play around with the magnets on her refrigerator. She had the whole alphabet in magnets as well as some others, but those don't quite stick out in my memory as clearly as the alphabet ones. I was making words and spelling my name in different bright colors. In my mind she had about a million different colors of all the letters, but looking back it was probably only a couple of sets mixed together. When I was four though, it seemed like there was no end to the variety of colors with which I could spell my name. Eventually it came time for us to leave. I stalled, taking as long as I could to put the magnets away, because I realized, for what was probably the first time, that I wouldn't see my Grandparents again for a long long time. This was quite a shock for a four year old who was used to spending time with them practically every day (at least this is how my memory goes). Finally I had them all down except one, a bright yellow E. I left that on the refrigerator and let my Grandma hug me. Somebody, I can't remember who, told me that I had forgotten one. "No," I told them, "That's so you can have something to remember me." My Grandmother kept that E on her refrigerator until about a year before she passed away. It never moved, unless I was there to move it. That was our tradition. Whenever I would visit, the first thing I would go check would be to see if my E was still up. It always was. Even when she moved from her house up on the hill to a duplex closer to town after my Grandfather passed away, the refrigerator went with her. I'm pretty sure she kept the fridge because her duplex apartment didn't have one, but there is a four year old in me that says she kept it because she didn't want to take down my E. A yearish before she died, my Grandma moved into a nursing home. She was getting to the point where she needed somebody around to help her all of the time and didn't want to burden her family. Any one of us would have gladly moved in with her or had her move in with us, but she had taken care of my Grandpa in his last days and hated the idea of putting us through that. She couldn't take her refrigerator, though, and I remember the first time I visited her in the home I wondered where my E had gone. I didn't see it anywhere, but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. Moving out of her own place had been incredibly hard for her and I didn't want to make it worse. A month later my Mom and I went back to visit her, and when we were out to lunch, my Grandma grabbed my hand and pulled it (and me almost) across the table to her. "I know you've been wondering about this" she said and put something wrapped in a tissue into my hand, squeezing my fingers "You should have it now." I looked at her, and without having to open my hand I knew what it was. I could feel the smooth edges through the tissue and sure enough, when I opened my hand and peeled back the layer of kleenex, there was my E. I knew what it meant. I started to cry a little, and bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from having a fit right there in the restaurant. My Mom, who also looked a bit misty herself, said "Don't cry, it's okay" and laughed a little. Then she got up to go to the bathroom. My Grandma and I didn't say anything while she was gone. I couldn't look at her face. Instead I stared at my Grandmother's hands--aged and a little shaky. When my Mom came back I looked at my Grandma and I knew. Her eyes reflected mine and we both just.... knew. When we got back to the home and were dropping her off, my Grandma pulled me to her and hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe. "You take care of yourself. Not anybody else. Just You. You just be my girl and I'll be proud. I love you so much." She told me. "I love you too" I choked out, partly from sadness and parthly because this small woman only looked like a little old lady. She was actually incredibly strong and was about to crack my ribs. Finally she let go a bit and held me at arms distance. I remember staring at her and thinking that we had exactly the same eyes, and then it was time to go. I did my best to not cry on the way back into town. I know it would have been okay, my Mom would have understood. I'm sure she was sad herself. But I also knew Grandma did not want me to be sad. She and I had said our goodbyes without having to say them out loud. I never saw her again. She died a little bit over a year later on November 12, 2000. I sat there remembering that day, staring at the backpack and missing her more than I've missed her in a long time, and of course that brought me back to Abbott, who I wanted to call more than anything in the world at that moment. Finally I sucked up all of my determination. I just didn't have the space to save the whole backpack. For the first time since the day she gave it to me, I reached into that backpack and pulled out my small yellow E. It looks exactly the same as it did when it used to rest on her refrigerator. It isn't any more dusty or worn. It still smells faintly of canned peaches and it still sticks to refrigerators. I don't think it will ever live on one again, though. It's had it's display days. Right now it is sitting in a box at home. When the day comes to move I will take it out of that box and put it into my new backpack, and on we'll travel together, my Grandma and me.