It’s been 8 ½ years since Jacob and I got married. As one of the most practical wedding gifts in history, someone gave us 3000 square feet of plastic wrap. It’s a giant roll, from Costco. From the beginning of our marriage to the end of it, we went through maybe a fourth of the roll. 750 square feet.
Who knows how many plates and bowls and serving dishes of food it was used to preserve. 500, maybe? We used it to wrap up the window air conditioner for storage in the winter. It protected plates and picture frames each of the four times we moved. It’s a perfect temporary storage solution. It does the same job that bubble wrap or a Tupperware container would do—keeping things preserved for now, until the time when we need the thing it’s preserving.
The roll of plastic wrap came with us from 5th West to College Avenue in Rexburg, then from College Avenue to the farmhouse with Mama and Papa Chapman. It traveled with us to that first little house in Provo. When we moved to Salt Lake, we almost forgot it in a kitchen cupboard in that Provo house, and I drove all the way back to get it. “That would have been a huge loss,” Jacob said, half laughing with relief, as I carried it into the kitchen.
That roll of plastic wrap is “one of the things I got in the divorce.” Our separation was uncomplicated, legally speaking, and amicable, emotionally speaking, even if it was deeply painful for both of us. Jacob left the plastic wrap behind, which I’ve always interpreted as a sign of good will. I still have it. It’s seen me through maybe 100 more plates and bowls of food preservation. I still use it to wrap and store the air conditioner. Sometimes I use it to protect surfaces while I paint.
Most often nowadays, it’s used to wrap up finished cross stitches for my Etsy shop. The box the roll came in fits perfectly (PERFECTLY) into my craft cart, and it seems a logical way to protect stitches for storage and shipping. But it’s being used to protect dishes and picture frames lately, too.
Because I’m packing up this Salt Lake City apartment. I’ve spent four years here, two with Jacob and two without him. And it felt like time. My life is shifting, and, it feels like I’ve outgrown this place. I’m a houseplant in need of re-potting.
I’ll be joining a friend and another roommate in a perfect old house with a giant backyard, about ten minutes away from my current place. I’ve got two weeks before move-in day, so I’ve been emptying shelves and clearing out closets. And I keep stumbling upon things I saved when Jacob and I separated. Old pictures. Notes. A small book stamp that says “Chapman Family Library.” There are some things that I’m keeping. They’re the tangible equivalent of journal pages. A record of the past, of truths that were, that add up to become the truth that is. My marriage with Jacob was a big and beautiful and important part of my life, and I feel no need or desire to erase it.
But there are some things that fall into a strange “in between” category. Things that I don’t feel a need to keep for sentimental reasons, but that I’m having a hard time getting rid of. A few framed pictures of us. Things that used to decorate the Chapman home, when this apartment was the Chapman home.
Maybe it’s too much to let go of everything all at once. The apartment and the framed pictures, too. If I’m a houseplant in need of re-potting, I don’t want to cut off too many of my roots in the process.
So for now, I’ll wrap these things in plastic wrap. I’ll pull of yards and yards from that Kirkland Signature roll, and preserve those pictures temporarily. Until their spell is broken. Until I’m no longer in the middle of being transplanted.
There’s a voice in my head that cries out for me to make a decision, to let go or not. But I’m learning that I can roll my own, when it comes to healing. I’ll let those things from the Chapman home sit, preserved in amber, or in plastic wrap, as the case may be. Until it’s time to transplant them, too.
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