Another Moving Story

Now we are fully moved onto the boat, and finishing up with sorting and stowing the last few odds and ends. Cars, furniture, books – all sold or stored or given away.
We find we are both wondering what details we have overlooked, which precious objects have been misplaced or discarded in this frenzy of reorganization. I am reminded of this passage from the Between Lives, the autobiography of the artist Dorothea Tanning:
“Letters, photographs, books, objects, even documents, big and little things treasured like breath – impossible to live without them – move with me and the beds and the casseroles from house to house, yet some of them and always the wrong ones inevitably vanish, a diminishment at each upheaval hinting at loss. A little lost each time, not much, absorbed into the mysterious space to which you willingly confide pieces of your reckless life, your memory deeply troubled and faulty without them. Because even memory can loose its key like that of the last house, and upon what recall then can you depend to enter the next one? After awhile, I could not remember what I didn’t have anymore.