The past
Sunday, November 27, 2022
Was this day even real?
I started the day having coffee with Amanda. It gave us both a reason to get out of the house, vent about things, and try to convince people that we’re okay. What we are are two moms that are over caffeinated, sleep deprived, and just trying to survive one day to the next.
I then spent the next four hours putting up our outside Christmas lights. Of course, never fails, as soon as I was done, one of the damned strands go out. It’ll have to stay that way until I either forget about it, or it irritates me to the point that I buy another strand. I was supposed to go back to my parents today to go through more boxes, but I just didn’t have it in me. I wound up falling asleep on the couch during the Niner game, which is fine, because they shut out New Orleans anyway. I woke up to my daughter kissing my forehead and asking if I wanted her to make me dinner. She’s such an amazing kid.
I knew that I had to paint now or I wouldn’t at all. I got everything ready, and started, when my step-mom said that she was stopping by after her Target run. When she made it over, she brought a box that she said she knew right away was mine.
When I moved back to California in 2005, I moved in with my Grandma. Before moving, I had several boxes sent out because I wasn’t going to be able to fit everything into my little Ford Escort ZX2. Apparently, one of those boxes was set aside and forgotten about. I thought it hadn’t made it, or I had forgotten it, but it turns out that it wound up in my Grandma’s garage for the last 17 years.
Opening that box was a trip. I found my softball little league hats from 1994, a vanity license plate from high school, my first driver’s license, my college student ID, and a lot of cards and photos that I had forgotten about. It was so weird to be looking at these things after all this time. It brought back a flood of memories, good and bad.
After cleaning the box out, I went to finish my painting. I’m honestly not sure if this would have looked the same if she had never brought that box over. I’m not even sure what I was feeling when I finished painting.