Two weeks ago I signed a lease for my new apartment, the first place I have officially lived since I moved out of 1000 Judah in June, 2007. I got the keys and drove my new car to BART for my weekly Thursday night trip to the city and the first parking space I found was number 505 which, if you know me or you know gematria or you know both, is an interesting (un)coincidence.
Then over the weekend I paid the Strong Young Movers (yes that is the actual name of their company) of Oakland, California a big pile of cash to move all my stuff out of storage in Alameda and into my new home. Hence, the Novella of the Shelves...
Last year I moved out of a very well-furnished studio in the city and among other things had a whole set of silver IKEA furniture: bedframe, dresser, and bookcase. After the Strong Young Movers had come and gone last Saturday and I was left in my new apartment to dig through boxes and begin to reconstruct my life, I discovered many things--one of which was that my silver bookcase was missing all three of its shelves.
The mystery intensified after digging through box after box and realizing that the shelves had disappeared completely. What a weird thing to lose. Where might they have gone? I couldn't stop thinking about them! I was expressing my confusion about the shelves to a friend last night when a very interesting idea emerged. "You could write an entire novella about this year by just telling the story of the shelves," he mused. And so, I will:
After much reflection this is the only thing I can imagine that happened:
•The movers came to my apartment in the city and, in the process of taking everything away, discovered that the shelves were not attached to the bookcase so they slid them out and gave them to me to take separately, as they did with other loose items like lampshades and etc.
•Since I was not only moving out but also leaving to live in Yosemite for ten weeks all on the same day, I did not really have anywhere to put the shelves and so I stuck them in the back of the green Subaru (now of blessed memory, not the new silver Subaru) and left for camp.
•Then I probably forgot they were in there since the entire cargo area and backseat were filled with the belongings of the other owner of the Subaru since she had moved out of her house and sublet it for the summer as she would be touring in Israel, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and leading a safari in Tanzania therefore not needing a room in the Marina for the summer months.
•Three weeks later when the Subaru got rearended on the freeway and I left it in Berkeley when I went back to camp, I likely had no recollection at all about the shelves and so they just stayed in there parked in the lot at Subaru of Albany.
•When the other owner came back and reclaimed the Subaru, before it was eventually declared totalled from what I understand, she almost certainly found the shelves as she was taking all her stuff out and not knowing where they had come from or what they were doing in there, threw them away.
So--my shelves are no longer with me and there is nothing I can do. This year is also no longer with me, fortunately and unfortunately as Remy Charlip would say, and I have returned from my sixteen months of nomadic existence to begin building my life in--of all surprising places--Oakland, California. This year I have lost some shelves and found that suddenly somehow I have long hair, I have unexpectedly fallen out of touch with a few friends but made new ones along the way, I have found that in putting on some much-needed weight I now have boxes of pants that are too small--did I really wear that size before?! Found and lost, lost and found. The morning that I left Alameda two weeks ago Wes asked me, "So, Sarah--would you do it all over again?" "Ask me in a month," I said, but really my answer is yes, in a minute, of course, absolutely. It was a complicated amazing hard beautiful wild brave year and it was just what I needed, and I have learned much from it, and now I am home. I have a new home and new car and new job and I have to remind myself often that it is indeed still me, that I am the same in the midst of creating this new life. Or, am I?
Today is the second day of Rosh HaShanah, yesterday dawned the Jewish New Year and I feel curious about what lies ahead in the moon's new trip around the earth. At new years past I have felt very different from this, I have felt small and scared and like my life was living me instead of me living it. Last Rosh HaShanah, in the fall of 2007, was uniquely terrifying because only days remained before I was leaving the country with plans not to return for seven long months. But return I did, and then I went away again, now here I am. Some things were just as I thought and some things were completely different and I do not fear the new year as I have before--I am curious and confident and I feel more complete than I have in a long time.
So--the end. My work here is done. I have gone away not just somewhere but many places, I have returned, and I am taking what I learned while I was away and using it to write the next chapters in my life. This blog was begun for the purpose of chronicling my year's journey, and now it is a new year and I am home. Thank you for reading what I've been writing here, thank you to every one of you who helped me make this year all that it was and all that it could be. Good journeys to you wherever you may go.
