I got a new wallet today. I’d been lugging the old one around for a decade. It was three inches thick, filled with no money and too many knickknacks.
There was a whole life in there. A couple of pink pebbles from Croatia. The credit card I ran up ten grand on when I left Spain and moved to New York. A sweet note on a gum wrapper from someone I used to know. Bus card from Granada. Train ticket from La Rochelle when the lavender was blooming. Matchbox portrait a wino drew in Portugal. ACLU member card. One quid. North Carolina State Fair general admission ticket. Folded Polaroid from a CofC party. Voter registration card from South Carolina. Salt stains from Folly Beach. Membership card to the Double Crown in Asheville. Piece of a hospital bracelet. An old therapist’s card and a fishing license. Nothing from Nashville—more than I should’ve kept. And a room key from New Orleans.
I have trouble getting rid of stuff. I come from a long line of narcissists and sentimentalists, people who can attach meaning to just about anything, people who keep piles and piles of dusty memories in dark corners just in case. Nana used to keep everything from receipts to National Geographic magazines. She’d even keep dead songbirds she found around the farm. She’d put them in Ziploc bags, stick them in the freezer, and say, “I’m going to take ‘em over to the college. Someone ought to study ‘em.” But they never seemed to make it over to the college. Then summer would come, and I’d stand in front of the freezer and decide how badly I wanted a popsicle, whether it was worth sticking my hand into the dark, cold, door with all the dead birds inside.
I, too, was inclined to hold onto everything for a while. But then I watched Nana’s mind leave, and she was just out there in this big ol’ farmhouse with a bunch of magazines and dead birds in the freezer, and all the stuff started to swallow her up. That’s when I figured I wouldn’t hold onto anything ever again. I’d travel light and concentrate on the road ahead.
But today, I was going through this damn wallet filled with all this crap, and I was thankful for every little turd in there. I was grateful that I’d kept pebbles from different continents and notes from past lives. I was proud that Nashville hadn’t won. I was thankful that the seizure didn’t shake me too hard. I was grateful for my therapist and afternoons on the river with Dad. And I was happy as hell that I hadn’t stayed in one place for too long.
My new wallet is slim. It holds only my credit cards and my driver’s license. Tonight, I will take my debt down to the bar, drink my beer, and remember everyone I’ve ever known and everywhere I’ve ever been. When I close my tab, I will take the receipt, fold it into a neat little square, and stick it in my wallet.
In ten years, when I get a new wallet, I’ll do it all over again. On the off chance that I’ve lost my mind by then, or my body is found on the side of the highway, when the police go through my wallet, they’ll see this random receipt sitting underneath my ugly mug on my driver’s license, and they’ll say, “That’s weird. Why do you figure he kept this? Those must’ve been some pretty damn good beers.”
They will be correct, and I’ll be goddamn happy that I got rid of everything and held onto something.
Hello, world.
I keep a picture of my neighbor's child at 9 yrs old - she is 41 now- in mine, yet no pictures of my own family. I have no idea why and I don't want to think about it too much. Any way you don't sound like a narcissist. It's an interesting accumulation.
i prefer my popsicles vegetarian