The Dresser Drawer

I hadn’t spent any real time at mom’s house for years. It had always seemed so much easier to have her come over to our house. Here the kids had their own activities and friends and my husband could go about his life relatively undisturbed. It seemed to make the most sense. But today, she called and asked me to come over and help her organize the photograph drawer. It seemed like a strange request, and I spent hours fretting about what was the real underlying agenda for the day, and organizing pictures seemed like the least likely motivation for this summons. I imagined all sorts of conversations; problems with her health; problems with her finances; plans to move; marry. My mind was just all over the map on what was the real meaning of this invitation.

The bottom drawer of the dresser had always been full of photographs. It contained several lifetimes all lying in piles, packed of memories and memories forgotten. Mom kept everything, and organized nothing. The pictures remained unlabeled, thrown into the drawer, waiting for that rainy day when there would be nothing else to do. As a kid, I always loved that drawer. I would pull it out, and spend hours going through the photographs of people somehow related to me. In a funny way, it was the lack of organization and labels, the ability to just wander through the loose pictures, that let me add the depth and colour to these two dimensional figures.

As I enter the house, I am surprised to actually find mom organizing the photographs. I get us both cups of coffee, and sit with her and I begin to look through the piles she has started. As I do this, my suspicions melt away. I begin to believe that what she wanted was my company in this nostalgic journey she had begun.

Sitting on one side, are photos of my parents when they were still together. They both were so young looking. I could never imagine my parents being that young, nor looking so happy together. I find my favourite, the one with the two of them standing in front of their 1957 hard top thunderbird convertible, mom in her pedal pushers; my dad in his suspenders and black fedora hat. I use to imagine that they were always together like that. I begin to tell mom about my imaginary stories around the pictures. We can’t help laughing at my Capri pants I am wearing, the modern day pedal pushers.

She is carefully putting together piles of pictures of my sister and me. Right on top is a picture from my fifth grade, the one of my three best friends all with their medals for completing and passing the President Kennedy’s physical fitness test. It brings back the memories of the dreaded 600 yard dash and the even more dreaded bar hanging. I am sure I was not the only fifth grader that didn’t pass that test, but I don’t remember anyone else failing with me. Funny how looking at the pictures, I can still remember how embarrassed I felt that I could not hold myself up on the bars for the required time period. I can still feel the red seeping into my face while I sat back and everyone else received their medal. I felt like a complete failure, sure I would never recover from my inability to pass the PE test.

I start talking to mom about my agonies in fifth grade. Memories flooding back, of feeling like the outcast. It seemed to me I was the only one in my class with divorced parents, the only one whose mother worked full time, and the only one that could not pass the physical fitness test. We both remember that period as a pain-filled time of growing up. My mother, all of a sudden finding herself divorced with two young kids to support, and me, struggling to fit in.

The time seems to just fly by as we both juggle with memories and share stories. The afternoon is gone, and it is time for me to head home. I invite mom to come home with me for dinner. As we head out, the pictures remain in their piles in and around the dresser drawer. I guess they will wait until a rainy day, when we have nothing else to do.