The Value of Things

Back in the days of puberty, erupting sexuality, loss, and growth, a boy crafted a piece of wood into a shelf. It was a narrow shelf with four large hearts.

He was never my boyfriend. He just held my attention from seventh grade until I escaped public school at the end of my tenth year. I would write the letters of his nickname, O-Z-Z-Y, on my left fingernails and cover the ink with clear polish. When students made fun of me for it, he told them, “She can do whatever she wants.” He was one of the kindest people I knew at that time in my life.

Yet even he succumbed to the plague that is meth. At least, that’s what I assume. In the South the phrase, “He’s been sick for a while,” is often code for drug addiction; and odds are, it's meth.

It wasn’t a surprise when he died a decade ago, or maybe it’s only been five years. Time hasn’t moved the same since I took to the road in the spring of 2019; everything before is an echo. His passing was one more death among a stream of faces I saw in the hallways of a high school that cared more about rules than education. When teenagers broke a rule, an adult would spank them with a paddle. The ones with holes hurt the most.

Once a student was punished, they could sign the thing. This chunk of wood was displayed on the principal's wall as a constant, brutal reminder of the school's authority. It hung there with children’s names scribbled on its skin, carrying with it every strike for every misstep from every student before. Ozzy's name was on it too.

In a sea of cruelty, he was kind. It wasn’t a surprise he died, but it hurt.

I kept this token of affection he made in shop class with me through three different homes in Tennessee and then eight other moves in Vermont over the last twenty-seven years.

Then, I burned it. It burned because living in a van means things need to have value. Especially now that the storage unit is gone. On the final day of the lease, I stared at the space that once held everything I thought I’d need when I returned to a life society deemed normal.

A picture of a version of me I barely remember is shoved into one of seven thick trash bags.

Of course, photos, essays, and cards from my two offspring, I kept.

The stack of stories, poems, letters, and photos during the most profound love of my twenties and beyond, are slipped into a drawer in the van, to stumble upon at a later date, and yet again not read.

There are boxes filled with an embarrassingly large number of uncirculated copies of my self-published novel.

And resting in the back corner is the shelf.

When all these things were sorted, I looked into this emptiness and felt relief. It wasn’t letting go of the unit, but rather a place to store a life I was no longer living.

During this purge, a memory circulated of my first home in Vermont after the divorce began--a one-bedroom basement apartment. My children took the bedroom, and I slept on a loveseat in the windowless living room. The makeshift bed was too small, even for me.

When I moved from this perpetually damp, concrete hole beneath a house and into an equally dilapidated three-bedroom apartment, I packed everything. Used stickers speckled with dirt made their way into a box. That broken loveseat was lugged up a narrow flight of stairs. Ozzy’s shelf was sorted in with other decorations. Everything that wasn’t trash, and several items that were, traveled with me. Again and again and again. Someone who watched me gather my children’s drawings asked why I wasn’t throwing anything away.

Because, at the time, these things had value.

Today, everything I’ve collected over the last forty-two years has been reduced to what can be used or tucked into the van, save five boxes stashed at my son’s apartment, which will one day be whittled down to a single container.

What remained, went into the flames.

I started this fire with dead branches and a pile of tissues from each time I didn’t want to venture to the bathroom to pee. I tossed in a section of lumber cut from the handmade drawers, which helped level the bed after the van’s leather bench was removed. Among the flames are twenty or so copies of the first draft of a novel I prematurely self-published a decade ago.

When a book burns, the words remain. The inky font clings to the charred, crumpled, gray pages. It is as if the story is begging for one final read as it moves from being a thing of heft, into its rudimentary self.

In this mini pyre of memories, fallen limbs of trees, a carved section of wood from the heart of the van, outdated words on paper, a little bit of piss, and one tangible artifact of love mix together and burned into cathartic ash.

As I stare at the remains of Ozzy’s gift, the euphoria is palpable. This life is no longer shielded by things; instead, the memories create space and bring the earth, a lush, vibrant environment of endless possibilities, into focus. The world in all its chaos, grandeur, ferocity, and, most importantly, kindness, can be embraced like a lover, one that’s always been there, waiting.