Something I am sure of is that life is all about asking questions. My question to you is: what is your relationship with your memory box? Do you have one? How big is it? Do you go in there often?
I am not afraid of decluttering. I wear clothes to death and then say goodbye to the rags with a kiss and a hug. I on-sell many of my belongings, like my coveted baby-pink Crown Lynn crockery set and my extensive shell collection.
I use my 1970s stationery set for writing letters, and I was okay with bidding my laminator (that I begged for when I was 12) adieu. It’s fine – I can do it! But when it comes to my memory box, I have a problem. Firstly, calling it a box is inaccurate: it is actually five sea chests. You know, those ones that people moved all of their belongings in when they travelled by sea in the 1900s.
My greatest pleasure is the knowledge that I have the notes that were passed in class between my friends (who are now mothers), as well as the handmade books I made to teach my little brother, Toby, to read. I still have the green cast that encased my arm from one of the seven times I broke it, signed by my friends at the time. Siblings and parents and friends may be our witnesses, but these preserved objects are the evidence.
When I was at my parents’ house recently I tasked myself with creating some kind of order for the family memory boxes. I opened the first one. It contained the letters my dad wrote to my mum everyday when he was working in the mines in Australia and she was at medical school in New Zealand. It all HAD to be kept. They have been moved from house to house, securely bundled amongst the company of many more of their kind. The letters got me thinking about the pleasure of the archive.
The memory trunk I had at the end of my bed from when I was a child was there – and completely full. At 14, I had a penpal who lived in America. Our regular correspondence lasted two years, until my last letter went unanswered for six months. My penpal’s reply finally arrived, covered in ‘New Zealand Customs’ tape. An official letter inside explained that a plastic bag with ‘leaves from my yard’ written on it was intercepted, investigated, and destroyed. Every letter from my dear correspondent is in my memory trunk, along with a letter gifted by the boy who asked me to formal in year 11, outlining and explaining the ‘original lyrics’ of a song he had ‘written about me’ (I Googled the lyrics at the time; the song turned out to be Trisha Yearwood’s 1992 hit, ‘Down On My Knees’, written two decades earlier).
I skimmed the surface… and closed another trunk. Since high school, I have not slowed down on archiving. I’m beginning to think there ought to be some parameters, some rules, for what awards an object its cosy spot in a memory box. It all feels a bit much. Have I created a monster I cannot look in the eye?
I must stress that I do not identify with the term ‘hoarder’. I know what you are thinking, ‘big river in Egypt’ (da-nile). Most people do not love the term, even when they undeniably are one, but hear me out!
In my time, I have performed my decluttering services worldwide: in offices on a small, remote island in Estonia; in time-capsuled rooms of clothes, unopened since the 1990s, in Italy; my friend’s bedroom at the tender age of 13 (selling piles of dolls and Jacqueline Wilson books on TradeMe); and in many a student flat – the ones where the rolling leases have resulted in cupboards of inherited junk that people who lived there years ago ‘might come back for’.
If I love you, no job is too large, nor too disgusting. I want to touch every single thing you have touched. I will discard your mouldy food waste and disinfect the Tupperware it has been concealed (and congealed) in for months. I want us to be brutal together; but my soft spot is memory. If, during a declutter, you hold up a t-shirt your dad always used to wear on a Sunday to mow the lawns, I get it, and we are keeping it. The piles are: donate, Tatty’s (and whatever they will not take – Recycle Boutique), paper recycling, rubbish, and The Memory Box.
Distraught at my lack of progress with the boxes, I turned to YouTube: ‘How to declutter a memory box’. I was immediately disheartened. The YouTube lady’s box was only shoebox-sized, and contained items from her parents and her children: multiple generations! In ONE box!? Staring out at a sea of cubic metre upon cubic metre of chests of just MY memory items, I closed the video. She did not get it. She even suggested photographing the items and putting them on a USB: digital archiving. The horror!
Did I NEED to reread the letters I received in England while I was on a university exchange from a man professing his love to me? (He turned out to be a huge eye roll, but I still kept the bubblewrap yellow mailer). I saw my mum collect the curls from my brother’s first haircut from the hairdresser’s floor ONE time (normal, nice, acceptable), and what did I do? I took that as a ritual. Ever since, including after my last fringe trim four months ago, I have kept my cut hair. I have kilograms of my hair in these boxes. Who do I think I am, Marilyn Monroe?!
I began to build a scaffolding, my own decluttering blueprint. Yes, it was lovely to have all of the birthday cards from my friends from my ninth party. What was lovelier was to keep the cards of the friends I still talk to, those who lasted the distance. Did I need the ‘Kidz Conference’ t-shirt to commemorate an event I was selected to attend but hardly remember? It did not even have my name on it – out. My Otago Representative Hockey Under 16s uniform? That was a yes – my name was screen printed on the back in yellow all-caps. Definitely my biggest (maybe only) sports achievement! My rules were coming into focus.
Have you sat with someone as they go through their memory box? It is the most tender moment to witness. The way they hold and touch their ephemera-turned-archive, eyes glazed over, as they begin a story and cannot finish it. The object contains magnitudes that cannot be fully described. As long as I can remember, my Dad has been scouring beaches for the perfect ‘X’ quartz vein on a rock. His parameters are clear: the rock must fit in your palm and have a good contrast, and the quartz must be unstained. There are hundreds of these specimens at our house. Through them, he can recall the beach, who was there, and when it was, just by holding them.
My bedrooms have always had various items Blu-Tacked to at least one wall, displaying whatever was important to me at that time. I have scrapbooks that were made in a night, usually the last night of a lease, where I have glued those pieces straight from the wall onto the pages, calling it a day. These tomes are discreet records – I have one from Wellington, one from Auckland, one from England, one from Japan.
There are so many people I love who have fragments of themselves safe in my chest. Their handwriting, a photobooth strip from when they came to stay with me in Tokyo, a shell they brought back from a beach for me… the tentacles stretch far. Right now I remember, and maybe it will all be junk in a wardrobe someday, but I love that it is there. I implore you to beg to see the memory boxes of the people you love, and to listen to their stories: why did they keep this selective shrapnel? Why do they move it from bedroom to bedroom? What makes the cut?
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