Monkey on my back...

The monkey has left the building.  That monkey that I carried around on my back for the past five years.  That monkey that sat upstairs in boxes! taunting me not just for a second time, but continuously.  The monkey on my back is gone!

When I got that fateful call from my ex-husband five years ago, that our marriage was kaput!, I immediately went into panic-packing mode.  My sweet small group friends at church were my accomplices in collecting all my belongings which suddenly became my belongings, and not our belongings with that one phone call.  Suddenly, my desk was my desk.  His guitar was his guitar.  And, so on, and so on.  In that mad rush, the filing I had put off for a month or so, was piled in a box and toted to my mom and dad’s house with everything else that was suddenly mine.  

Then, I began to work full-time for the first time in 11 years.  That little filing pile grew slowly, like one of those moles you watch carefully but don’t quite feel it’s time to slice off yet.  I’m so tired, I remember thinking, I’ll do it Saturday when the girls are with their dad.  Enter, Dancin’ Jimmy.  The weekends on a plane, the weekends on a phone, the weekends on email.  The pile grew.  By the time we got married, the pile needed to be biopsied badly!  It was surely malignant by now.

Then, we got married and moved to Richmond.  I wanted to spend the summer with my girls before they started their new school, so I put it off some more.  I would definitely get to it when school starts.  Enter, Peanut.  Well, embryonic Peanut.  Boy, oh boy.  I knew from the day of the first pregnancy test this one was gonna be a doozy!  Sick doesn’t describe it.  Then, as I finally was able to regain my composure after that first trimester, my heart started going crazy, then as I got that under control, the hip went out.  So, that box upstairs?  Not an option.  Then, we moved to Memphis and well, baby who doesn’t nap. 

The bad thing was, it was eating at me everyday.  I could not sit on my couch, play outside, go to the pool, without thinking about that mess upstairs.  And, worse!, what must Charlie think of me?  The last thing on the planet I would want him to think, was that I was......gasp….unorganized!  It’s my crack, y’all.  Can’t cook, can’t nurse a baby, but dang it, I can ORGANIZE!

So, Peanut is two.  And, has thankfully (KNOCK ON A FREAKING HOUSE MADE OF WOOD) has been so sweet, helpful, and docile lately.  And, I’m between classes.  SO…

I DID IT!  And, it was an amazingly wonderful three days.  Among the files, bills, report cards, insurance cards, birth certificates, MARRIAGE licenses, were cards.  Dozens of them.  From my dad.  My mom.  My grandparents.  My brother, even.  And, I sat and cried for three days.  Tomorrow I will begin to share some of them.  And, truly…they are the most valuable possessions I own.