The importance of honouring the past and present

Cloudy Chicago, facing south from the Van Buren Street Pedestrian Bridge. Image: Kirralee Nicolle

BY KIRRALEE NICOLLE

I’m currently getting packed up to move house.

This isn’t just a move up the road, it’s an interstate one, complete with all of the goodbye events, research on updating licenses and a schedule of moving trucks and booking flights.

This isn’t the first move of this scale for me, but it is the first time I’ve even moved house in six years. The last time I moved interstate, it was just me, my decrepit 1992 Toyota Camry and a boot full of disorganised paperwork, clothes and the favourite books I’d accumulated over my first 20 years of life. Soon after arriving in Melbourne, my car was toast.

This time, the move includes my very organised husband and his Excel spreadsheet with meticulously labelled boxes, two young children and two neurotic cats. Luckily, this time, the car is more likely to last beyond the trip, but my paperwork is still in disarray inside three brightly-coloured folders. But that’s where my husband's skills come into play.

After some gentle encouragement that I should perhaps go through my paperwork and organise it, and some complaining from me, I decided he was probably right.

What ensued was several hours spent sorting through old letters and cards, registration papers for all the various cars that eventually ended up as scrap, and other, at times baffling odds and ends. Most of these were from about a decade ago, when I was in my early twenties and certain that I had a very detailed grasp on the world and how to live in it.

Some of my personal favourites from my sorting included a to-do list with about 25 tasks, with only about five of these ticked as complete, a card from a friend commiserating over a parking fine and a rap written by another friend and performed at my twenty-first birthday, which repeated over and over that I was “just so young”. I really was.

Part of the tongue-in-cheek rap performed at my 21st birthday.

As I pored over the contents of the folders, I was hit with nostalgia, sadness, joy and the sense that I had lived many lives. In the time since, I’ve lost friends and family to illness, tragedy or drifting apart. I’ve lost dreams, opportunities and at one point, almost lost my faith.

Throughout, I've lived in a city that I never saw myself residing in for so long, and I've battled long and frequent bouts of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and homesickness for the people and palm trees of my hometown on the Sunshine Coast. But since those early 20s, I’ve also gained a great deal: new friends and ever-evolving friendships with old friends, a loving marriage, two children and a much clearer path ahead than I once had.

As other fellow emotionally-avoidant types will understand, it was an overwhelming activity on several levels. But another recent experience had taught me to lean in, feel the range of emotions and embrace the mental load.

In the midst of the chaos of planning a move, we recently travelled with our children to the US and Canada. My husband, who grew up overseas, was due for a reunion with the graduating class from the international school he attended. Together, we spent several days as tourists in Chicago, chatting and catching up on a decade of life while gawking at the wonders of the stunning Midwestern capital. While at times it involved almost literally dragging a preschooler and a toddler around five different cities over two weeks, it was perhaps the most worthwhile challenge we've undertaken as a family.

What struck me from it was the rapid passage of time, the complexities of one another’s lives and the importance of staying connected to our stories and the stories of those we love. The fact that these wonderful people would only be present physically with us for a few days meant we all dove deep, opened our lives up and spoke freely in a way which rarely happens in a quick catch-up with a friend or a playground trip.

At the end of the trip, I missed them dearly. We are still talking about how special the time was, and how we look forward to the next reunion in five or 10 years.

As I leaf through the various notes and documents, I’m now acutely aware that as time passes, it’s important to keep feeling the depths of our love for others and for the versions of ourselves who come and go throughout our lives. It's far too easy to relegate the parts of our lives we find confronting or overwhelming to our own versions of the three coloured folders.

A lack of time, distance, energy, resources - these can all be good excuses, but excuses nonetheless as to why we fail to keep connecting to the parts of our past that remain meaningful.

Perhaps it’s time to pour a cup of tea, open an old folder or box of photographs, and take some time to reminisce.