A Set of Stacking Russian Dolls
Back in March,
when we packed up my parents' estate
, we put as much as we could into suitcases, but most of it went into a storage unit in town, until we found time to get it here to Arizona.Thanks to kind friends who hitched up a trailer and met my husband near Sedona where they were vacationing, our items arrived over the weekend.(Thanks Marilyn, Dave, Blair, Al and whoever else in your wonderful family who made this possible!)
I remembered many things in that trailer, but not everything. It was kinda like Christmas in August. Except for the 100 degrees part. And the shorts and flip flops.I looked forward to finding the exact place to put each item in my home. I had just returned from Colorado, visiting my sister and nieces and had seen some of my parent's things there:Mom's doll.A painting of poppies.An antique hutch.
A set of stacking Russian dolls.
The stacking dolls were from a friend of my parents who had been to that part of the world.
In the book, Bread and Wine, Shauna Niequist reflected about looking at photo albums with her grandmother, how her grandmother said that getting old is like carrying all these selves with you.
Her grandma said, "You carry them inside you, collecting them along the way, more and more and more selves inside you with each passing year, like those Russian dolls, stacking one inside the other, nesting within themselves, waiting to be discovered, one and then another."
Unpacking the trailer was like sorting through all of Mom's selves.
The dishes she played with as a child. The bibs we wore whenever spaghetti was on the menu. My baby picture that hung in the stairway in a group of four with my siblings. Now separate.
The Jesus portrait painted by an artist friend that they bartered for with a tent and camping equipment. A set of green Depression glass from both of my grandmothers. A Christmas wall hanging from Dad to Mom. The last few years, Dad always bought Mom something that went with the song, Do You See What I See?
The Garfield lunchbox that Mom packed each day for Dad.
As I unwound bubble wrap, I unstacked these different selves of my mother. As teacher. As wife. As daughter. As grandmother. As friend.
The process was nostalgic, but not sad. Healing. I was able to remember Mom before cancer. Before I became her caregiver. Before the final nesting doll, the largest one, that holds all these memories.
Some people as they age get smaller, as limitations or illness makes their worlds shrink. Mom chose a fuller life, adding on more layers, even as cancer attempted to define her as lesser.
This is the challenge I then must ask myself: Am I growing as a person? Am I increasing in size? In experience? In influence?
I like to think of my layers, that I can take out at any time as memory, and then put back inside, waiting to be unstacked again at a future date. This latest layer of mine--as matriarch--still feels too big, like there is too much of me that needs to grow to fit my skin.
Perhaps, even now, my mom has things to teach me. I will unstack. And remember.
