Down Lanes and Over Stiles

After all the tense nights of nocturnal studying (three of them, specifically the ones just prior to E-Day), the worry filled days of emotional breakdown (two, to be exact. E-Day itself, and the day before), and the hard work that went into preparation (no comment on that line), you would think that now, on this side of the Dreaded Day of The Exam (that's the E-Day you were scratching your head about), I would have some free time to myself.

Give me a second to catch my breath while you go along and re-read that to see if it makes sense.

See, bottom line, I deserved a break. Oh yes, I did. The tension, the panic, the three hour and twenty minute torture of sitting in once place and writing on the same subject without pause… surviving something like that calls for a week of relaxation, with nothing but movies, cartoons and writing.

  

My mother, however, as most mothers are wont to do, did not see it that way. It turns out that, unlike me, she had actually noticed the growing pile of papers and strewn clothes accumulating around my room over the last week… and the only reason she had kept her peace was because she didn’t want me to use the ensuing conflict as an excuse in case the exam went south.

What I want you to take from that last line is how resourceful I can be when occasion warrants. 

Well, now, here we are. E-Day is behind us. And I am officially under siege.

I know that I’m going to lose. There comes a time in life when you realize that Mothers Always Win, and that you can never change that, no matter how hard you try. The only reason I sort of put up a fight is because, well, I don't want her to know how much of a pushover I am.  

And there's also the fact that I happen to be the Evil Dictator. I need all the assorted insect communities of Roomland to know that I personally did not want to remove their homes… either that or I get unpleasant visits from protesters in my bed at night.

It has happened.

So here I stand, broom in hand. When I look around, this is what my room is to me:

What’s with the boxes, you ask? To me, each box represents each and every single bit of clutter that, well, clutters my room. Be it a scrap of paper with a few random letters scribbled, that inch long pencil stub with the razor sharp tip, that blue-green marble with the chip in it, or that long sliver of wood with a date carved on its side (25^th May, 2011, if you wanted to know)… it’s a box.

To anyone else, those would seem like junk… and yeah, to be honest, now that I read that short list again, I guess I would have to agree with them. So what, it may be junk when it comes down to it… but to me, it’s much more valuable than that.

Because, you can never put a price on memories, can you?

Now you know what’s with the boxes. Each box is a pile of collected memories, and each bit of junk that came from a specific period in my life caries that bundle of memories along with it.

Mathew is sentimental. Was that such a big shock?

Our memories make us who we are. And the ‘junk’ strewn about in my room… it’s a part of me, as much as a fingernail or a lock of hair is. We’re insep… okay, there’s a degree of severability there. But you get the point. Memories define us.

That’s why it takes me a good whole day rearrange a desk drawer. Clean up my room? That may just take a while.

Sometimes, cleaning up old stuff can feel like a trip through a time machine. Memories you thought you had forgotten, friends who you had not spoken to for a while… I tend to get nostalgic at times, even though our family has been through rough times in the past. I can look back at it all now and thank God for what has improved, and kick myself in the rear for all the books I lost to ‘friends’ over the years, among other things.

Oh, those books. Sigh…

The best memories, I feel, are the ones that we forget. A strange thing to say, I know… but think of how that one day, when you opened up some drawer and found some knick-knack of your past by accident. Think about that surge of memories, the emotions, and images of times gone by… wasn’t that feeling you had so much better than if you had had those recollections in your mind the whole time all those years?

Now I’m guessing you can imagine what’s going through my head as I stand here, broom in hand, looking at all those beautiful, cherished piles of boxes that I am supposed to get rid of.

It’s never easy.