We are moving in two weeks and in my frenzied attempts to clean and purge things I no longer use, I came across my old red suitcase. My parents had bought it for me in 2005 before my semester abroad – they said I needed a ‘good set of luggage’ to make the trip. At the time, it had two other luggage mates of different sizes, but this is the only piece I have left.
I drug it downstairs to check its contents – three maternity bras and an old pair of jeans. Everything smelled musty, like it had been sitting in a damp attic for a decade. I put the suitcase near the door and told Flynn to toss it since the main zipper is broken and the wheels don’t spin properly anymore; it’s like a grocery cart that rolls everywhere except the way you want to go.
I stared at it for a while as it sat alongside a pile of other things destined for the trash.
I remembered my excitement at taking it to Spain in 2006 – in it I had stashed a box of chocolates from a local shop in my hometown as a thank you gift for my Spanish host family. I ended up eating the entire box sitting alone on the bottom bunk in my Barcelona hostel on an incredibly bad day my first week there.
It kept all my creature comforts safe in my first big adventure alone that year. I always kept a laminated photo of my friend Matt in the front pocket – his sister had given it to me in 2001. He died when we were fifteen and having his picture with me in my travels made me feel like someone was keeping me safe.
When my friend Callie and I decided to become expats in 2008, I shoved an entire summer wardrobe into it because I was determined to be as stylish as possible while we traipsed across the southern hemisphere. I fell in love with that place and when I later moved there to reinvent myself, I curated my life to fit inside it.
And before I left Chile for good, I carefully packed my daughter’s baby things into it - colorful onesies and cloth diapers. Everything else I owned stayed in our little house and was thrown away.
“Mama why are you taking a picture of a suitcase,”? Lucia asked as I snapped a picture of it by the steps.
“Because it has memories inside it Lu,” I replied, and carried it back up to the attic.