Twenty-One Boxes Of Everything And Nothing

My friend Hal (not his real name) asked me to bring my pickup truck to his storage unit. His wife had gone to retrieve some of the Halloween decorations and saw mouse droppings. She feared an infestation. He wanted the option of clearing his things out, if, indeed, mice had set up residence in their indoor, climate-controlled storage building. Given the oppressive heatwave we’ve melted under the latter part of this summer, it would not surprise me to find mice hanging out at 74°.

The unit is a small one, as units go. Twelve feet by six feet. About half the size of a bedroom, or a small closet for a master bedroom, depending on which side of town you’re on. The left half of the unit holds equipment Hal uses for his fund-raising business. A portable spotlight, portable stage units, and a utility box. The middle has some loosely stacked holiday totes, Christmas, Halloween mainly. A cardboard box the size of my love seat back home holds one of two Christmas trees, the second sitting in a massive “Christmas Green” nylon bag, lying across the first box, the way a black cat sits perched on a love seat or a piano bench. Quiet, dark, and still, looking like it might hiss at you if you bothered its position. On the right, pressed tight against the wall as if to make itself as small as possible, lies an assortment of small cardboard boxes, a pair of open topped totes, and printed metal tins about the size of boot boxes. They sit neatly in two packed rows, not in an orderly sense, but more like underwear and socks line up in a drawer stuffed too tight sense. The boxes had sagged and dripped into each other over time. I expect you might find a long buried skeleton lying in the same way, a fine layer of dust reminding you to dust and vacuum when you get home. You don’t move a box from the pile as much as extricate it from the arms and elbows of the boxes closest to it.

Looking left at his equipment, there was zero evidence of mice. No droppings, shavings, or empty Jif jars anywhere. So we pulled and unzipped the bagged tree and looked inside. Rather, Hal looked inside and I peered over his shoulder from a safe, I could avoid a startled mouse jumping to escape the bag distance. The bag was clean and I didn’t have to evade any Jerrys, Mickeys, or Minnies. We pulled the bag off its perch and laid it aside against the hallway wall.

Hal next opened the larger Christmas tree box. It, too, was pristine. No cuts, holes, tears, or carcasses. Just the detritus from Christmases past that settled along the bottom of the box, bits of foil, fluff, stray fake needles, and a naked ornament hook. It made me think of the Christmas hook I found under my love seat in June-ish when I moved it to vacuum. We set up our tree in our little front room, near the window. Since we stage our ornaments and accoutrements on the love seat, it makes sense I found an ornament hook under the love seat. It also reveals how often I vacuum under the love seat. Please don’t judge me.

Having moved the big tree box and remaining sealed totes, we saw some mouse droppings here and there along the floor. Which left the pile of boxes. Hal looked at me, a hint of doubt along his brow.

“What do you think we should do?”

I looked at the pile and thought out loud that if mice were to take up residence in his unit, they would look for warm, fluffy, nesting type places. Boxes with fabric, plushies, sewing supplies. He followed my gaze to his Oma’s sewing kit. It looked like a small, pot-bellied stove stuffed into a burnt orange calico print dress one size too small. Hal lifted the lid like you might off a stove pot, sticking his nose to look inside. A jumble of brightly colored threads, bobbins, notions, lace, and sundries winked back. And no mice.

Every time Hal shifted a box or lifted a lid, I expected a mouse to leap out, like Jerry Mouse startled by Tom Cat. I didn’t quite know whether I was anxious to see a mouse, or disappointed to not see a mouse. The reality of the mouse droppings didn’t quite match the absence of mouse butts one expects when droppings lay dropped. Around. I was profoundly grateful, though, there weren’t cockroaches. Yeah, I just shuddered in disgust and horror at the thought of those damned creatures. I expect hell is being locked in a dark, noiseless room, except for the sound of your own breathing, heartbeat, and the scratchy scuttering of the thousands of cockroaches crawling around the room, looking for your flesh and trying to collectively decide if your earlobe or left nipple will be the appetizer. I also marveled at how fast a train of thought can flash through your mind while standing on the edge of a storage unit with mouse droppings.

Hal pulled a tote and set it on top of the big Christmas tree box, which was now our table. He pulled back on the toweling inside. I winced as I heard a squeak. It was a wooden something, clunking against another. If that was a mouse squeak, it had a low, bassy voice, like Dominic Cheddaretto, played by Vin Cheesel.

“This was my Oma’s.”

Hal pulled out a carved wooden man, sitting on his haunches behind a tree stump. His pipe sat on the stump, the stem clenched in his grin, his eyes smiling and chuckling over a secret joke. Hal pulled the stump, revealing a wooden ring in the base.

“You put a candle there and light it and it makes him look like he’s smoking his pipe.” I could see him looking at the stump man smoking his pipe in some distant memory, sitting near the side table at his Oma’s dark, warm house. I wondered if he could smell the smoke too. I remembered how my Grandma’s home smelled at Christmas, tamales, the Christmas pine, and the faint whiff of marijuana on my cousins and uncles who thought they got away with smoking pot out on the front lawn while the grownups and “good” kids, namely, me, played canasta over coffee.

Hal set the man back in his box and pulled another from the box carcass. This held pictures from Oma’s home in Germany. There were old men that Hal couldn’t name and places edged with that fuzzy, just out of focus look, a memory faded over time. The sofa, hands holding cigarettes, INDOORS, bold plaid, all screamed the sixties, or seventies. That’s how I remember pictures of my childhood.

My mom sent me a box of childhood photos about fifteen years ago. These were photos of my school aged years, kindergarten through high school. Moments, captured with shaky hands and blurry faces. We all smiled, often posed in those awkward, say cheese moments, hoping we’re doing it right. Sometimes, we smiled because what we were doing was worth smiling about. Like me and my brothers floating in the American River, our toes peeking out of the water. Or huddled around the campfire at Black Meadow Landing on Lake Havasu, dad serving up hot chocolate and coffee like elixirs of life.

The pictures captured a moment. And reminded me of the smell of pine and chocolate, the sound of water gurgling behind us as embers snapped and popped while we laughed at everything and nothing. Because life in those moments was wondrous and full. Sometimes, as a kid, I would go meta, realizing I was in a “moment.” And would hope that I remember how good this felt. How wonderfully, I have no words to describe how marshmallow and chocolate good this moment, with the people who filled my life with love, how rich this fleeting passage of time was to me. So I’d look at their faces, and draw deep pulls of the aromas and feel that deep gratitude that you have no idea is gratitude until decades later, when you look back and some of the people in the pictures are no longer close.

“Twenty-one boxes.”

I looked at Hal. “That’s all that’s left of my Oma. Twenty-one boxes of…stuff.”

He missed her. Hal’s eyes filled with the light and sounds and smells from deep pulls of memories and moments of his Oma, her fire and grit, and her long decline from dementia. We looked at the pile, stuffed in a corner of a small storage unit in Middle Tennessee. Twenty-one boxes left from a lifetime of living and loving, laughing, caring, crying, and trying to do her best. Reduced to this?

How many lives had Oma touched? How many moments linger at the edge of memories of her children, grandchildren, or those men and women smiling back at us from blurry pictures? I know Hal carried a lifetime’s worth of memories of his Oma. Many happy, some sad, or frustrating. She lived in him and her voice, her influence, echoed in his. Even if he lost all twenty-one boxes, with their pictures and small, useless yet priceless treasures, Oma is remembered. As is my grandma, and grandpa, my daddy, and my aunty, and every person who has passed through my life. I remember them.

And for now, our memories keep them alive. Until we’re gone. And yes, there have been billions of people who have lived over the millennia. Everyday, ordinary people, who lived and loved. Who sat around fires and laughed at everything and nothing with their families and friends. Unknown by you and me. But I’m certain they were very much like us. And I like to think they live in my memories, echoes in my ancestors, remembered generation after generation.

Hal and I put everything back, except the trees and a few boxes, which I loaded into my truck. We joked and laughed. And I wrote these memories onto my heart. These moments of droppings and stump smokers, laughing at everything and nothing. And feeling grateful to share life with a friend I love. Even if mouse droppings were involved. Especially so.