I planned to get so much done today. To clean my room, which hasn’t been cleaned in more time than I care to admit, to wash clothes (but upon finding all the washers on my floor full this afternoon, I decided to postpone that), and to clean up and organize the piles of mail and other miscellaneous accumulations of daily life that I never have time to put away because I am so rarely here except to sleep, shower, and occasionally eat. I did organize and put away the mail and other stuff, but I found myself mostly looking through old picture albums of my kids as babies with their adorable grins and giggling faces and taking down the art work on the doors.
You see, since moving in over 3 years ago, I have been periodically hanging up the school work and art of my two boys on the doors in my room to keep them close to my heart and make me feel a little more like they are with me here even though they’ve never been allowed to step foot in this room. The back of my front door holds the work of my oldest, and the front of the bathroom door, which actually faces the back of my front door at only about 15 feet apart (which is not much more than the length of my almost square room) showcases my youngest son’s art. I also had some overflow of all my little one’s work from the end of Kindergarten last year on the wall above my bed and the door frame around the bathroom. I even had a couple of pieces of art from my boys and a friend’s child or two on the closet doors.
My process for displaying and keeping their work is this: I keep all the stuff I would like to see displayed on my doors for awhile and when I have more than enough precious work to cover the doors, I take off the old work, throw away that which has become too sun bleached from the large window across the room or that which I have decided I can let go of (because if I tried to keep everything from my kids’ school years, I would have no room for anything else in my life), then I put the rest away in a large Marshallese basket for my kid’s memories boxes and books later in life. Once I put up new artwork, I take a picture of the doors with my point and shoot digital camera and save it to my computer and a thumb drive for safe keeping. That way, the ones I do end of having to get rid of can still remain in my memory later through those pictures.
Today, I didn’t have any new work to put up. I just decided to take them down because it’s been up so long now, and I will, hopefully, be moving into a house sooner rather than later, and I figured that was one less step to take care of in cleaning and packing up to move. The only thing is that the empty doors make me sad tonight as I write this. It looks funny without my kids’ colorful personalities plastered all over my doors. In addition, because I haven’t accumulated anything new in such a long time, the empty doors mean they are getting older because they are not doing all the cute artwork anymore. They are doing worksheets and book reports and handwriting practice instead. These are all essential, but it signals the end of another stage in their lives for me. They are not little boys anymore; they are becoming big kids with bigger responsibilities.
The empty doors symbolize a change in life for me as well. These are my last days, maybe ever, to reside in a BQ, and although, it has been bittersweet to have to go back to living in what most consider a “dorm room” when I have kids who can’t visit me here, it has also been a good place for me in many ways. It’s been a place of healing, a place where I could reflect, grow, and just be me and to be honest, a place where I’ve have the time to figure out who me is again and gain strength, confidence, and faith in myself and my God. It’s hard to believe the home with the boys I’ve dreamed of having and worked so hard for here is finally becoming a reality. It will most likely be my last home on the atoll as I will not be here forever. Truthfully, I’m much close to the end of my island years rather than the beginning or even the middle, but at least I know I’ll be leaving with my goals, career and family wise, met, and with plenty of awesome memories with which to fill up the empty doors in my next home, wherever that may be!
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