I spent a solid half hour this morning looking for an eyeglass repair kit.  I found one but not the newest acquisition, which still has its tiny screws.  In the process, I became enmired in an obsession that I freely acknowledge:  containers.

Here, there, and everywhere in my 198 sq. ft. tiny house sit little boxes, lidded china bric-a-brac, and all manner of vessels designed to hold life’s precious debris.  I had so many more in my traditional home.  Quite a few went into the seven tubs that got distributed among my nieces and my son on my bon voyage tour of Missouri by way of Chicago.  But new ones graft themselves to me every time I let myself step through the inviting automatic doors of Lodi’s thrift stores.  The urge draws my lily white spastic hands to anything with a lid.  I promise that I will just check the underside for a maker’s mark.  I vow not to buy anything more.  

I’m fooling no one.

As desperation propelled me forward, from shelf to drawer, from basket to box, I found all manner of forgotten treasures.  Beads, broken earrings, small cars covered with old sticky fingerprints.  Pictures of unrelated people from different eras spewed from drawers and sewing kits.  I even found the pearl that fell out of one earring during my third wedding in 2011.

But no full-fledged eyeglass repair kit, just the half-used one, with its tiny two-headed screwdriver and cleaning cloth, depleted of its hardware.  I surrendered about ten minutes after I should have left for work and shoved the offending deficient packet into one pocket.

I’ve taken to driving round Twitchell Island Road on busy mornings.  I abandoned the shortcut off Jackson Slough after navigating around the aftermath of what might have been the tenth fatality in the exact spot since I moved here.  The route along Brannan Island Road seems to take too long.  By contrast,  Twitchell Island Road gets me to work in decent time and takes me by the stillness of water in which swans peacefully swim.  The sight of them is an absolute delight for my stony Midwest heart.

They did not disappoint me today.  I watched a pair of them, one in front by quite a few feet.  My adoring gaze made no difference to their serenity as they floated in rippling water and shimmering sunshine.  Without a real camera, I despaired of a clean crisp shot.  But somehow I scored a bit of magic even in a blurry image. 

I sat in the silence of my car and thought about the containers that hold so many small items in my home.  I remembered the up-rounds-and-down-rounds by which the eight Corleys divided our parents’ possessions after my father’s death in 1991.  My only child will have no one to share the burden of sorting through whatever I leave behind me.  

Will he know why the blue bead earrings live in the brown Asian box on the shelf in my sitting room?  I touched them today; I remembered wearing them in my sister Joyce’s wedding in 1970.  But to Patrick, those earrings might seem like junk. 

Next to them, I found the sapphire and diamond dinner ring that my second husband won at a fundraiser and presented to me over dinner in front of all of our companions.  The server had handed it to me as I walked back from the restroom, not realizing that my husband meant it for a gift.  I gaped at the gorgeous ring and told her that she must have made a mistake, I could never afford anything like that.  She hastily reclaimed it and then, in a flash of understanding, asked me to feign surprise whenever it came my way.

I did her proud.

I got rid of so much when I sold our home in Kansas City.  I gave something to everyone who came to help me clean and pack.  I kept only the most important memorabilia, my jewelry, and clothes that I don’t even own now since they came from an entirely different season of my life.  

But those little containers ! They cling to me!  Sterling, wood, wicker, glass;  carved, polished, and painted.   I have not one but two puzzle boxes that a client’s uncle made and sent with her when she moved to America.  After years of abuse, I got a divorce for her with findings that allowed her to maintain her permanent resident status.  She thanked me with hand-made objects from her home in Japan, including those two puzzle boxes.  Something rattles in one when you shake it.  I’ve only gotten them open once in all these years. I think there’s a coin inside.

I watched the second swan preen in the morning air and thought about my son, coming to California at some point days or weeks after his mother finally surrenders to whatever ailment manages to claim me.  Will he open those boxes and strain to recognize their contents, and select a few by which to keep my memory alive?  Or will he thrust them into a tote and haul them to Lodi, where a gleeful shopkeeper will paw through them, looking for unexpected treasure?

A truck passed, tapping its horn.  I raised my hand in a rueful salute, and shifted into drive.  Like the poet, I had miles to go, and unkept promises, and pretty little boxes through which I realized that I, and not my son, must rummage to bring order where chaos reins.  I glanced at the swans, who have no jewelry, no containers, not even pockets.  I could not help but feel a little jealous as I made my weary way to work in the soft glow of the California sunshine, next to the slough, beneath the leafy canopy of the overgrown trees along Twitchell Island Road.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®