Unwrapped

We moved into our house 7 years ago, when the kids were not yet a year old and therefore it was like living with a whole pack of drunken whirling dervishes. DH and I made the decision to keep all our breakable stuff (what I like to call "dustables") in storage until the kids were old enough to not break stuff. Well, old enough to come up with a creative excuse for breaking stuff rather than just a cute face and an "oops!" Part of the house clean up project was to find some way of bringing all those treasures out of hiding. This house has almost NO storage or display space, so it entailed buying a piece of furniture on which we could display all our stuff.

So - some money, several phone calls, a few choice curse words, and endless nailing and hammering and drilling later, we've now got the mother of all entertainment units. Said unit has TONS of display space - vast expanses of shelves which are begging for decoration. Out came the boxes (I thought we had one box, turns out it was FOUR boxes.) DH and I spent a hilarious evening surrounded by forests of packing paper and gleefully unwrapping stuff together. "OOHH! Me! Me! I wanna do the next one!" followed by "OMG! I totally forgot we even OWNED this thing!! It's SOOOOOO cool! Remember when we got this?" and so on and so forth.

Among our treasures were all the mezzuzot we got for our weddings (which we thought were long lost), out little plastic Leaning Tower of Pisa (purchased at Pisa of course), various Swarovski things, beautiful carved buddahs, shells collected on our honeymoon, the tiny wooden tree purchased in Germany, some lovely brass pieces from India, and so on and so forth.

Two items in particular were of great amusement to me. The first was a gold award (literally a cup on a wooden base on a marble plinth thing-a-do-dee) which apparently I won for achievement at...wait for it... Joe's Sports Camp. ME? Sports camp?? Seriously?? Best thing is I have NO RECOLLECTION of even going to said sport camp, let alone winning an achievement award. And since my sporting prowess is about as good as a blind uncoordinated elephant trying to dance the mambo... I have to wonder about the authenticity of this award. It amuses me no end to think that I of all people won a sport award.

The second item was a pocket-sized Etch-A-Sketch. Again, something I forgot I even owned, and something which I'd forgotten that I was frighteningly GOOD at doing. The kids have now become obsessed with this toy - they love playing with it and DS now hides it under his covers at night so he can just mess about with it until all hours. They've also become amazed at how good their dear old Mum is at the Etch-A-Sketch... I am nothing short of the current reigning Family Etching Champion. Nice to be back on top again (after my crushing loss to DD2 in the Ro-Sham-Bo Championships).

To me the most surprising thing of all is my emotional reaction to all this unpacking. We sat there amidst all the paper and the laughing and the hoards of stuff, and I just felt this feeling of overwhelming sadness. In part it was because my Dad had given me many of those things, but also because it made me realise that when I PACKED those boxes, I was in my 20's, mothering babies, and living a very different life. The people who acquired those things...the people we were before we had kids, a mortgage, a job, responsibilities... who WERE those people? Do I even remember who I was before I became who I am now?

It was really weird, that feeling of looking back at who I was versus who I am now. I think in some ways I've lost parts of me I'd like to get back - the person who is a little bit reckless, a whole lot silly, and quite a lot ridiculous. Sure, loads of parts of me have improved with age... but I think unpacking all the stuff is a timely reminder that I've been taking life a little too serious lately. It's time to let the silly back into my life.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to achieve this (as per usual, feel free to weigh in with your two cents)....we'll just have to see what inspiration I derive from the treasures recently unwrapped.