bookmarks

We’re moving to our new place soon. Found it a few weekends ago, after much craigslist time and a few long days of viewing places. The range of rentals in this town always blows my mind. The neighborhood we live in now has a ton of hipster cachet, and that, combined with the fact that tons of people bought here during the bubble and have big mortgages to cover, means that people are offering very little house for a whole lot of rent. We were hoping to stay in this neighborhood, but we need more house than we could get. Turns out, though, that just a couple miles away, in a much fancier neighborhood, but an older one, there are a lot of really nice old duplexes.

So, now we’re in  moving frenzy, juggling work, baby, and getting two households moved by late April. To make things more exciting, Izzy has decided to start popping teeth out, and to refuse swaddling, meaning that we’re in major sleep transition time. “Transition” translates, of course, in to very little sleep, at least for the big people.

I’m getting rid of a lot of stuff. I’m a saver, and have been carrying around huge chunks of my history in generations of corrugated boxes, from Michigan to Washington to California to Oregon. From moving van to moving van, basement to basement. I’ve whittled away a little here and there, but also added. I’m one of those people with boxes labeled “memorabilia,” since there’s no other coherent category for the content. This natural tendency of mine was only exacerbated by my sister’s death, when she was 21 and I was 23. I started saving her stuff and my stuff. I also have always saved school stuff. Until pretty recently, I think I probably had every paper I’ve ever written, and given that I’ve always been humanities-oriented, and have three post-high school degrees, that’s a whole lot of papers. I mean, I had all my high-school papers, even. Seriously.

I’ve been itching under the weight of all of this stuff lately, though. Izzy is a part of this, I believe. I am not completely clear on how or why. I think a part of it, though, is a shift in my vision from backward to forward.

There is a bookshelf on the landing of our stairway leading from the first to second floor. It has two short shelves, and it was the last bastion of my academic books. It was the ones that meant the most to me. I’d long since culled the boxes of IMPORTANT BOOKS that I never read, or merely skimmed. Those are the ones Powells will actually give you money for: they’re clean, spines unbroken, not super common. The ones I still had were in two categories. Ones that were seminal to me in my intellectual development, and ones that I always planned to read and never managed to get to.

Last week Izzy and I sat on the landing and went through them. I looked at each one, really looked, for the first time in, oh, about nine or ten years, since I finished my exams and decided not to write my dissertation. I had so many emotions run through me. Memories of the fresh excitement I felt when I discovered theory, when my mind was blown by feminist theory, when I grappled with Marxism and class. I felt a longing and grief for being a student. I love being a student. I’m a great student. I love the beginning of classes, the smell of classrooms, a crisp syllabus, heated discussions, research, writing papers. Love it. (If you could see my student debt level, you’d really know how much I love it.)

I sat there piling books into three stacks: one to recycle (most the books were so written and cracked wide that nobody would buy them); one to add to our next Powells trip; and one to keep. There were about 4 in the keep pile. And I really knew that it was time to let them go, but god, it hurt. I mean seriously hurt. I was crying and crying while Izzy chewed on a few and looked up at me in puzzlement. So I tried to figure out what was so hard about it. And I realized that the books, like so many of the boxes I’ve carried with me on my back, are evidence. Evidence of that life I used to lead, that I went to all those classes, got those degrees, was well-regarded by my peers and professors. That I did good.

At core they are evidence that I exist. And as I sat there with Izzy, I thought again about the ways that children can help us heal. That pile of evidence will never be important to Izzy. What is important to her is how I am with her today, and tomorrow, and the next day. What is important to her is our relationship, our human interaction. And when I think of that, I can recognize that I am carrying this stuff around for an old me, a me that shouldn’t be making policy anymore. And some of the tears, I know, were for her.

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