Unpacking

Back home, to my own place, after six weeks staying with family all over ‘the old country, as I call the USA. I go to the basement storage – lovingly called the ‘cave’, as in wine cellar, here in Paris – to get my suitcases out. I had put them away while I rented my place to a young couple from Singapore for their end of year holidays. I needed to make space for them and I didn’t want anything stolen, so I emptied out my chests of draws and my closet as well as the fridge and freezer.

I have been slowly working on this unpacking project since I got home a couple days ago. It is one of my happiest projects in the world. It wasn’t until I was 55 years old that I really got a room of my own, a full 46 square meter apartment of my own as it turned out; and I’m still getting used to that fact, 5 years later. At first, I felt guilty “how is it that I get this wonderful safe cozy place all to myself, right here in the heart of the greatest city on earth?” But as they say ‘gratitude trumps guilt any day’…. now I just share when I can and count my blessings every day.  Somebody has to live here, in this building that was built for the builders of the Eiffel Tower, and it might as well be me. I take good care of it, and don’t make any trouble. Here, in this apartment, I am a real Parisienne, without needing to be French.

This morning I started unpacking the jewelry box that I brought up yesterday from the cave. I had given the box to my daughter years ago, but she doesn’t need it now and I do. Wouldn’t you know it – surprise surprise – almost every piece I unpack brings me back memories, some slap me in the face with an almost physical force. Thank God this is a mostly pleasant experience. First, I bring out a bottle of Shalimar perfume that I carefully wrapped in a scarf. The scarf was bought in Istanbul for next to nothing 20 years ago, but I love its orange, red and yellow on such a fly away silk, so I keep repairing its dainty weave and I keep wearing it.

 The Shalimar was originally a gift that I bought for my mother as she faded into Alzheimer’s. I had read that smells help memories stay alive….so I hunted around Paris and paid a lot of euros to bring this familiar perfume home to her in Boston. It had been her mother’s favorite. My sister had reminded me of the name – and when I found the original shop on rue St. Honoré the sales lady told me what good taste my grandmother must have had. She opened the tester for me to smell and I immediately cried, no time between nose and eyes. There was my Mimi again, the one I snuck into bed with after a bad dream, the one who let me sort and count her buttons from her sealed up candy tin almost every morning. (Maybe this practice was the humble source of my famed ‘mathematical genius’ after all.) Anyway, I don’t open the perfume this morning. Mom had appreciated the scent years ago, but given me right back the bottle because ‘I never go out anymore’. Today, I am on a mission to organize my home. I am home again, and I even have guests coming for dinner tomorrow.

Next, I hang my everyday earrings; the six pairs I brought to America this Christmas with me. One of them is broken. It is a tear-shaped, black enamel earring with tiny pink, orange and red flowers speckled on it, but it came off its gold ear hook. I can fix this, no big deal, but I need the right tool. Sure enough, there are some tweezers for plucking eyebrows that no longer do their job. I don’t even know for sure where I bought those earrings – oh yes, I think it was from a going out-of-business kiosk on Isle St. Louis fifteen years ago. They have been my ‘go to’ earrings for longer than I would like to admit. When I pull my hair into a ponytail, I need something to finish up the look, and to let people know that I did look in the mirror this morning. But the tweezers strongly bring back my aged mother, she almost certainly had Alzheimer’s long before they diagnosed it. I remember her politely asking me to borrow my tweezers while I was visiting because hers no longer worked. I happily gave them to her – though she said I shouldn’t ‘lose my good ones’. I told her that tweezers were really easy to get in France because I knew she couldn’t quite manage the level of self-care built into buying your own beauty products. She was too busy bickering with my stepfather. I worry that my relationships with men evolved from watching that marital power struggle into being too much bickering as well: my husband left me rather than put up with my bickering demands. I wonder if I can ever manage an equal relationship with a man into the future – I don’t have the fighting force my mother had, but I do have the same need for equal status. Still – the worst-case scenario is that I live alone the rest of my life, and that is a lot better than living with most men anyway.

Meanwhile, I have rigged up an earring hanger in my bathroom, next to the mirror, of which I am quite proud. I used a tiny coat hanger hanging from a screw sticking out of the tile wall, from this I have hung a sort of strong screen (used for climbing vines on old houses in Paris originally, I imagine). This hangs down about a foot, providing lots of holes for earrings. It is even pretty by itself. Today, I am slowly putting all my earrings onto my bathroom earring display unit. Next up, is a fancy emerald and gold pair that I hesitate to show. They are my only valuable jewelry. My ex-husband bought them for me from a place of guilt when we visited Bogota together. I’m sure he already knew that he no longer loved me, but he wouldn’t face that fact so he figured he should give me a gift as his happily married spouse of 30 years. The earrings are hard to put on and hard to take off – but I like them a lot. I guess I will keep them with all the others for now, at least until such time as I am out of money and need to pawn them.

I just hung up the other piece of jewelry that Lew had given me. It is a heavy copper necklace he bought for me when we first moved to Kenya, after 25 years of marriage. I love it! It is very fun and reminds me of my long-standing friendship with that man. The engagement and wedding rings that he had given me back in 1984 were more like gifts from his mother, who warmly welcomed me into their family, as the daughter she never had. They are here too, in a precious box I put away for my children.

I am almost done putting stuff and their memories away, but I still have a laundry bag in the cave. You know the type woven of cheap plastic and carried to and from the laundromat by poor students or immigrants? I have one with a bold Paris design on it. It tore along the seams almost immediately after I bought it, but I liked the artwork so much that I sewed it together again. Now the zipper has broken irreparably so I taped it shut down in my storage unit. It has done its time, and it has kept unknown treasures safe while I was away. I might actually throw it out this time I empty it, but maybe not.