Junk drawer

Rummaging through the kitchen drawer where I toss everything. I decided it’s too full, it’s a mess and I need to clean it out. I start pulling out the piles and putting them on the counter. Lots of your typical things. Scissors, too many for one place and one drawer. Tape dispensers so many tape dispensers. Why, one can only wonder. I move them to a pile on the counter for the Christmas box. It’s the only time I use the tape, is wrapping presents, for it to take up so much room in this drawer seems ridiculous. I move one of the scissors to the Christmas pile as well with the same thought. Why so many scissors in one drawer. I look at the sushi roller, the skewers, and the straws. I put them in a separate pile. As I dig through the papers I look at the menus I’ve gathered. I can’t eat at those restaurants anymore. No sense keeping the menus in the drawer, so in the garbage pile they go. I grab a few more papers, crumpling them up and adding them to the garbage pile. I grab a card that’s written completely in French, it makes me smile.

Remembering when my dad gave me that card and me worried he had lost his mind a little. Knowing I couldn’t read French, yet the whole thing was French. But it was the message in the card, in his writing that mattered. To my “dawter”, crossed out. “Dather”, crossed out. With one more try. He had tried to write daughter three times till it said “to my Lorri.“❤️❤️oh my heart. It made me smile and get a bit teary eyed at the same time, remembering when I got that card. Knowing he never finished grade 8. Knowing English wasn’t his first language. Knowing he spelt everything phonetically. Knowing how hard he worked, how hard he tried and how much he loved me. I held that card close to my chest and placed it in a spot completely separate from the rest of the stuff. This should have never been stuffed in this drawer. I remember it was sacred. I started this drawer as things I never wanted to lose. Never wanted to misplace. And over time it became a pile of everything not just sacred things. It stopped me for a moment. I looked back at the pile of crumpled papers, that I had assumed were garbage. I grabbed the pile that I had tossed to the side without really checking them. I started to go through the papers more carefully. I uncrumpled the first. Nothing. Garbage. The second, garbage. The third, garbage.. I thought well so far all garbage so maybe it’s all garbage. I grabbed the fourth one and opened it up to see the handwriting of my boy. My sweet innocent boy with his best writing at 5 or 6, love you mom. I couldn’t hold back the tears. How I longed for the innocence of those days. The ease of just loving him without the conditions and restraints of today’s life. I let the tears fall silently down my cheeks, I didn’t try to hide them. I didn’t wipe them away, I let it all flow with whatever pain came with it. How long had it been since I allowed the ache of my boy to flow? How long had it been that I’d tried to pretend to be ok? How long had I missed the love I could give so freely to him. I stayed in the moment for how long, I don’t remember. It felt like time stood still. I moved from the drawer. I left everything where it was. I walked to the fridge. I moved everything else away. I put the handwritten note of love on my fridge where I could see it every day . Not that I didn’t know that my son loved me. I know he did. I know he does. It was a reminder of his innocence. A reminder of a place we used to be, so far away from where we are today.

I stood there for a moment lost in it all, the time, the memories, the freedom, the ease and the love. The mess still there in the drawer and on the counter to tend to and to clean up, but the message on the fridge as a reminder of all that is not lost or forgotten.