Jennifer+E.

In the four years before I was married, I moved five times. At first, moving was a challenge. How do you pack up your entire life and transport it somewhere else entirely? How do you make your copious belongings fit into a temporary (and often tiny) home? Pack the boxes, load the truck, hope for the best.

Arriving at my new abode, the boxes were quickly unloaded and the unpacking began. Inevitably, not everything made it out of the boxes and the remaining pieces of my life were consolidated into one box because //someday// I would need them or have a place to put them. And after all, how hard is it to tuck away one little box? It was a beautiful, simple solution with few casualties. The next time I moved it felt a little easier. I had some experience under my belt, and luckily one box was already packed and ready to go- the one labeled neatly as “miscellaneous” tucked away in the closet. What a relief. So miscellaneous box #1 made the short trip with me to my new lodgings.

Now I’m not quite sure how it happened, but as I moved from a dorm, to a dump, to a shoe box, to a legitimate apartment, the items in box #1 never seemed to find a place in any of them. Yet while they traveled around in their brown, taped up box, they managed to make friends (many, many friends). By the time I moved into my house, I was the proud conveyor of miscellaneous boxes 1-4. But surely in this house with many empty rooms, these crucial belongings would have their time to shine.

As my husband and I happily unpacked and began to build a home in this new place, these precious boxes somehow got pushed behind other “more important” boxes full of clothes, pots, plates, and pictures. Our home was quickly taking shape around us, though we were growing tired of unpacking box after box and there were many other household chores to be done. One day we stopped to take stock of the boxes that were left, of what could wait. It was decided then that these four boxes, my faithful travelling companions, could be dealt with another time. My husband dutifully lugged them up into the spare room, and then eventually to the attic when the spare room found a loftier purpose. And there they sit year after year. Miscellaneous boxes 1-4, packed full of items apparently too precious to part with, patiently waiting to be discovered again before the next moving day.