24 August 08 - 05:49
One More Box
We managed to get through one more box today, though it was a bit messy. It was the second bathroom box, and it held all the things that I couldn't decide what to do with when I packed the bathroom. Eventually I ran out of time and shoved it all in a small box. That box has been sitting on the bathroom counter for over a month, and since my hubby and I are trying to clear one more box a day until everything is unpacked, today was its day.
We worked on it together for a while. Some bits were easy, like the lipsticks and the nail polish bottles, we have a drawer where such things go. The spare bottles of sunscreen went under the counter where they can be easily reached. The hair clips went in beside the hair brushes. The sling I wore when I broke my elbow a few years ago went in a drawer with the other bandages. The Halloween makeup was harder, I put it all in a little bag, but I don't yet have a place for such rarely used things. And then there were the little barrettes that my daughters wore when they were very small, and they have too much hair now, but two moves later I haven't been able to bring myself to throw them out, and I didn't manage today either. Eventually I wore down under the weight of all the little decisions, and found something else to do.
At dinner, my hubby told me that he had cleared the box by the simple expedient of dumping what was left on the counter, and breaking down the box. He's bloody minded like that. It's one of the things I love about him. It also drives me crazy. But then again I drive him crazy by being unable to throw out ten year old children's barrettes that don't close properly any more, so I figure we're about even.
I went back in and managed to find places for a few more things. There's still a clutter of stretched out hair elastics and my daughter's lip gloss and other such things, but overall it takes up less space than the box did. We'll consider it progress, and tick it off as our box for today.
On another front, my friend pointed out this past week that I still wear my hair the same way I did when I was eighteen (long and straight, for those who've never seen me in the flesh, I don't think I've had even a trim for something like five years). And it got me to thinking, eighteen might have been the best year of my life. I'd cleared the hurdle of teenaged angst, I'd graduated third in my high school, I'd discovered Dungeons and Dragons and the little counterculture that clustered around the gamer board, I started dating my future husband, and I was beginning to write what felt like a break through novel. I felt like I could take on the world.
I remember my first few months in the grand metropolis of Halifax going to bohemian parties at a walk up flat on Barrington Street, where I was introduced to a world of thinkers where you were allowed, no that's not strong enough, you were pushed to think outside the box. I really think that was a place that must have felt a lot like the group of people that Jesus gathered around him, where they challenged every societal norm, and in all that questioning, reinvented themselves in the image of God. And while a lot of fairly ungodly things happened in that walk up flat, it's also a place where I could respectfully discuss Christian theology with non-Christians, and learned to my dismay that a pagan Unitarian knew more about my faith than I did. I think it's the place where I really decided to become a minister, because I gained a burning desire to teach Christians things about our faith I had never learned growing up in the church.
Two years later, I was twenty, my grades had sagged, I had had my heart broken by a friend who turned out to be a manipulator extraordinaire, the novel had ground to a halt in the sure knowledge that I hadn't experienced enough life to be able to write it, the bohemian partiers had moved on to other things, and I didn't know who I was any more. Perhaps the past twenty-five years of my life has been the epic struggle to rebuild my self-image now that I have been outside the box, now that I know that most of what I knew when I was eighteen isn't true.
But my friend suggested this past week that I look a lot like someone still holding on to the self-image I had when I was eighteen, holding on to it so hard that perhaps I'm not letting myself grow fully into the adult that I am now. Many of my female friends over the years, when they've run into serious challenges to their self-image, have responded by doing something drastic to their hair. They cut it off, they dye it blond or red or black or in one case blue, they grow it out, they put it in dreadlocks, whatever. I never have. Is that because I'm stubbornly unwilling to part with a self-image set in my youth? Or is it because I am secure enough in myself that I never felt the need to change my style to feel like I was in control, that I simply like my hair long and I'm too lazy to keep up with dyeing it so I never start? One thing about thinking outside the box, I learned to question assumptions, especially my own, and of such small things are we all made.
Don't expect any major style changes just yet. Though I did hear about one Anglican priest working Vancouver's East Side who sports a mohawk, I suppose it might be one way to reach out to the youth while simultaneously alienating most of the elders. Oh well, I don't think it's my style anyway. Or then there's the fact that my daughters are currently trying to talk me into getting my ears pierced for the first time. It does have the appeal that then I could wear those cute dangly earrings that all the other women ministers wear. It's the only ourward sign of femininity that we can get away with, it seems a shame to let it go. On the other hand, I don't like pain. Am I simply a wimp, or is this another case of holding on to my eighteen year old style past the point of reason? Hmm...
One thing's for sure, if I broke down the walls of the box around my self-image so I could put it away, there would be more than a few stray barrettes and hair elastics on the bathroom counter, that's for sure.
Blessings, Heather.
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