On Owning Things, Losing Things, and Keeping Things

When Dave, Hollie, and I went to my parents' house in Utah for Christmas, we made out like bandits. Spoiled! We had to pack all of our presents (as well as a bunch of things we had brought with us, and a bunch of nostalgia from my childhood that Hollie was to inherit) into four huge boxes that cost us $70 to mail to our house in Texas. Of course, we got home before the boxes did, and we promptly went from airplane to car for a nine-hour drive to Houston and another week away from home. When we finally made it back to Lubbock, we were worn out, pleased with ourselves and our little baby for surviving the road trip, and we were more than eager to put all of our new possessions away and play with our new toys.

In the coming days, David and I opened boxes of books for school, patiently awaiting the REAL packages of everything we sent from Utah.

...Yeah, they never came. We started to wonder after a couple of weeks, then wonder turned to worry, worry to frustration, frustration to regret, and regret to acceptance.

While we were in Houston, we forgot to turn off the mail, but it was okay because we had a friend staying at our place while we were gone (he was there to check out the university). There was only one day between when our friend left and we came home that all of our presents must have come, sat on our doorstep, and been stolen sometime in the middle of the night.

But who would steal boxes of baby clothes and toys, or old children's books with inscriptions like: "To my dearest Emily, from her Great-Grandmother Melba"? I told David and my mom that if I had stolen some boxes and found that they were filled with memorabilia and baby things, I would put them back during the middle of the night the next night. My mom said that's why I'm not a criminal. Dave reminded me that the cardinal rules of thieves is to never return to the scene of the crime.

What bothered us more than losing the things, though (things are things, after all), was that these things were gifts, chosen specifically for us by people who love us and know us, things that were thoughtfully considered, purchased, carefully wrapped, and brought to Utah to watch them be opened by us. My mom who lives in Utah and my sister who lives in Alaska can't be near Hollie more than a few times a year, but they can at least feel close knowing that Hollie is wearing their clothes.

It's made me want to at least memorialize what was lost by making an inventory of the things here. I must add, though, some embarrassment about doing so. We really are so ridiculously, wildly blessed and spoiled, that I feel shy telling everyone just how much we received in the first place. (And this is not even to mention the loot we brought home with us from Houston, including tons of great hand-me-down clothing like the polka-dot dress Hollie is wearing above.)

What Was Lost:
From Mom/Grandma:
* a lavender Bumbo
* several outfits for Hollie (including a special Valentines Day jumper)
* teething rings and toys
* new cute pacifiers
* David's first power-tool, a circular saw
* a fancy Vera Bradley briefcase for women
* an immersion blender

From Sister/Aunt Amanda and Brother-in-law/Uncle Tyler:
* a Baby Bullet (for making baby food)
* a baby food cookbook
* more clothes for Hollie (including bibs that said "from my favorite auntie" on them)
* a pretty stylish shaving kit with lotions and creams for men
* a rad tie rack
(fortunately Amanda's present for me I got to wear home: a necklace with a huge octopus pendant, and a locket with a watch inside!)

From David and Me to Hollie and each other:
* Hayao Miyazaki's Porco Rosso
* 2 Harry Nilsson LPs
* more cute clothes for Hollie (including her first pair of Osh B'Gosh overalls that I bought back in November, I was so excited!)
* Hollie's first purchase with her own money: Four special board books from The King's English including Grover's There is a Monster At the End of This Book, Pride & Prejudice for babies, and Dinosaur vs. Bedtime

Stuff we already owned that we were shipping back:
* a hip baby t-shirt that I wore in 1982, in good condition
* all my special hardback books from when I was a kid, including one I had won in a contest and scrawled an explanation of how I won it in my seven-year-old handwriting
* a black Mobi-wrap that Mom gave me before Hollie was born
* our Wii (the worst part of this is that we had bought the new Zelda game the day it came out because we were so excited, and now we can't play it. I had played just enough to see how super awesome it was. Oh, Zelda! When I get my PhD, I am going to buy another Wii and play you to my heart's content!)
* Dave's SuperNintendo!! This one is extra tragic, because it was in excellent working condition.
* Incredibly rare SuperNintendo game cartridges, including: SuperMetroid, Secret of Mana, ChronoTrigger, Tetris/Dr. Mario, Megaman X, and the original Mariocart (possibly others...we've been too downtrodden about it to check what we still have here)
* a special stuffed rabbit from one of my professors to Hollie (fortunately, she also gave us a blanket that we still have here)

Gone, gone, gone.

The ridiculous thing is that we still brought home so much loot despite these losses. Furthermore, our dear friends in town brought us over some of their baby stuff just days after we got home, including a mint-colored Bumbo and other fun toys. Spoiled we are. Spoiled rotten. And David bought me a really ridiculously nice camera that I demanded we take on the plane with us in case I wanted to play with it. Blessed and spoiled and blessed.

It has taken a while for us to stop saying things like, "Hey, where did we put that one thing....? Oh yeah, it was in The Boxes." And sometimes right after waking up in the morning I would suddenly remember something else that was lost that I had forgotten we'd packed in The Boxes. It felt like days of losing things. I was upset, and then I was scared. If people felt good about stealing special Christmas presents, couldn't they also feel good about breaking-and-entering or creepily stalking us, etc., etc.? But David assures me that, no, it is entirely different to steal from one's porch than it is to steal from one's bedroom.

I find it hard not to create backstories for the people who took our things. I want to narrate, to have an account of it. I picture them coming to our doorstep and expecting the boxes to be filled with watches, stereo equipment, video games and jewelry (the boxes were very heavy, after all). I see them put the boxes in their van and bolt, sweating, wondering if neighbors were watching. I watch their faces melt into disgust and disappointment when they pull out the gym clothes my Mom was letting me borrow, and they realize the weight was all in baby books and electronics from the 1980s. I see them dumping all our treasures into dumpsters, hawking the power-tool and the Wii for quick cash. I see them justifying their actions because in their eyes, we have too much already. I can see them writing a story for our family as they go through our private things. I can hear them say we didn't need these things, that we should feel lucky to have a family, a house, jobs, and zero need to ever steal from anyone.

And they'd be right.

We will always remember this Christmas as the one where all our presents were lost, and I will always remember it as the Christmas I realized a little more concretely that the reason we get together with family isn't for the gifts at all. The treasures I will always have from this Christmas are the pictures we took and the memories we made, so precious now that we live so far away from each other. The things I really want to keep aren't things at all: I'm so glad that I live at a time and in a place and in a situation where I get to live with my husband and my daughter without a fear of getting split up or taken from one another. I've thought a lot these last couple of months about all the families in the world today who must fear this loss daily. How grateful we are for so much. There's no way to take a proper inventory of the people I get to keep, my sweet family that I have faith will be with me forever. I'm so grateful that David and Hollie are mine to keep.

Hollie in another, different Valentines Day dress that Grandma sent to replace what was lost:

The green Bumbo from the Franklins and a giraffe from Utah Grandma's stocking that we took with us on the plane--the one baby toy that made it.