The dishes get a new story

Across the hall from my apartment is a large storage closet I recently rented. I’m calling it Narnia 2.0. The closet’s new purpose is to hold some very special treasures in my life, including those recently brought from Indiana after clearing out my parents’ home, readying it for sale. I swept out the closet dust of its old life and made room for mine.

Then I turned to Narnia 1.0, the spare bedroom. I remember the first time I opened the door to the spare bedroom after we packed it full from the recent Indiana trip. It had become a room so full of memories in boxes and tubs, furniture, decor and pictures, you could actually get lost trying to walk into it. That’s Narnia’s wardrobe logic: you step into what looks impossible and end up somewhere else entirely.

Now the real excavation began. So many empty Amazon boxes needed to go to the dumpster. Old things that have followed me around for years needed to go. Stuff like the old black two-drawer filing cabinet, holding my life documents for more years than I can count. I dragged it out, intending to go through it all, shredding what was past, making room for what’s new.

And then I found the dishes.

Tubs of dishware in a pattern I scrambled to choose in time for my wedding shower over 35 years ago. Picking a china pattern was one of many rules in the binder my mother made to keep the wedding planning organized.

It is all very pretty. I used to display it all in a china cabinet in our dining room because my mother said that’s what you do with it. I only used the entire set one year that I hosted Thanksgiving for the entire family. When the marriage fell apart and we moved from our family home, I never unboxed it again. I brought it through every move. Every season. Every version of myself, all the way to Florida.

It doesn’t sound logical, holding onto something like that. But some things have to travel with you until you’re ready to set them down. Yesterday I was ready. The tubs are sitting out in the kitchen, headed to our local Goodwill, the huge flea-market-style one. Somebody out there is probably hunting for that exact pattern right now.

The dishes get a new story. I release the weight that came with them.