No, I don't live in a jar. But a clear glass pumpkin-shaped jar sits on my desk. It was doubtless meant to hold cookies or some such, but over the years I have crammed into it various mementoes that mark significant moments of my life.
Next to them is the name tag from the reunion Holston Valley Hospital provided for children who spent the first few days or weeks of their lives in the NeoNatal Intensive Care unit. I don't like to remember my fear and dismay at first sight of my grandson's mottled little body after long, anxious moments waiting for the delivering doctor to bring him into view. But I can still see his lilliputian form lying in an incubator, IV tubes attached to a tiny arm, feeding tube into his button nose. A red crayon and the safety cover for an electrical outlet dates from his toddler days. A strapping eighteen-year-old today, nearly six feet, 150 or so pounds, thankfully, he bears little resemblance to that small preemie.
In the jar also is an old address label with my mother's name and last apartment address. Even more than twenty years after her death the poignant ache of loss lingers in my heart. I'm reminded of the hardships she endured, raising eight children in deep poverty, and am very doubtful that I could have done as well as she.
Visible near the bottom of the jar is a round piece of molded plastic that covered an indicator lamp on the old cordboard where I began work over thirty years ago as a telephone operator. Reminder of the job that gave me not only independence, but growth and the realization that I was a person in my own right, not just wife, mother, caretaker of an aged parent.
Through the glass peeks a parking permit from the local community college. Precursor to a long-delayed degree not fully earned until after retirement. Necessary? Maybe not. But sometimes personal fulfilment trumps necessity.
Digging further in the jar, I find an Allen wrench, used to assemble a large modular desk for my computer, ownership of which began another major turn for my life. Red and gold enameled keyring fob with a menorrah and the word "Shalom" from my first and only trip outside of the US, to Israel. Name tag from the Citizen's Police Academy class I took, another from a short-lived second career as a consultant for home parties selling women's lingerie. Still another tag identifies me as facilitator for a home Bible Study. Finally one ringed with ivy leaves from a ten day writers retreat in North Carolina. Still searching for myself?
I found me at that retreat. I'm a writer. One who seeks to trade bits of myself, via essays and columns, for personal gratification and, occasionally, money. And I sell lies, fiction, for the same reasons, fun and profit. I now have books as evidence that I'm a writer. Books won't fit into the jar, but the objects it holds show me the path I took to get to the place I am now. And they provide me with inspiration for further journeys on that path.
©2007 Sylvia Nickels