We are all in this together. When times get tough, Tucsonans come together and help one another. That is what makes this big city with a small-town feel such a great place to live.
This weekly series shares what life is like for your fellow community members while sheltering in place.
TAKING STOCK OF THE ‘PRICELESS’
The order says “Ready, Set, Go.” It’s a 1, 2, 3 list to prepare for a fire or disaster evacuation that is passed through the internet, home-friendly emails, spam. When you look at the fire map and comprehend that the boundary now includes your home, the instructions take on a different message. Wily fire. It can jump the line and transform your home into your former home.
It’s easy to be a spectator and feel for the plants and wildlife or think about how the distant forest fire boundary lines look just like scouts’ campfires with kids roasting s’mores around the dozens of speckled dots along the mountainside.
The notice of “Set” and the funky wavy lines of a map of your neighborhood shocks you into absorbing instructions and realizing that it is possible to lose your dog or forget important things. Ready? Set? The instruction before “Go”? Absolutely not unless a moving van shows up.
There is a five point “P” list to remind you to take prescriptions, pets, personal stuff like credit cards and money, cell phones, chargers and papers. It makes sense. The list advises you what you should take — passport, wedding license (l left it behind it’s a recorded document at the courthouse), pet — I also put the pet pillow into the car.
And then the list advises you to pack “priceless.” Take your irreplaceable mementos, photos and valuables. Yes, it’s all stuff, things, and just physical examples of ownership, but it’s your stuff and your mementos and the tangential memories of other people you love. I mentally sort while trying to keep 100% adrenaline down to a dull thud. What do I leave behind?
I packed my daughter’s wedding planning book, even though it was postponed because, after all, we are also in a COVID-19 quarantine. I left behind anything and everything that could be duplicated in the cloud, computer or by a company. That left everything that was invaluable.
I realized that our children didn’t want to see what I looked like when I was 5 or when we got married or relive any of my memories. They would want to see what they looked like as toddlers and return to their memories. I skipped my yearbooks, my photo albums, my tchotchkes and knickknacks. I packed the journals of their childhood and left my own. I added their photos, handmade sweaters from their grandmother, their diplomas, and their letters to us. I packed their blankies, stuffed animals, and childhood T-shirt quilts.
What else do you leave behind?
When we moved to Tucson, we remodeled our kitchen and I stupidly put most of my most personal and precious items into a storage trailer in front of our house. I carefully packed my wedding china, my cookie jar from my childhood, my grandmother’s serving platters, the best artwork from my children, fine furniture. After we temporarily moved it to a lot we owned, it was broken into and everything was stolen. I know that loss of memories, mementos and priceless doodads cannot be substituted.
My husband and I removed all of the art from our walls. We realized that if we had to start over, we wanted the interiors to look familiar as the drawers and shelves would be empty. I went into the closet of my children and plucked some of what they had kept: costume wedding dress; a kilt, baby rattles.
I left behind anything and everything that required a personal explanation of its history, purpose, or sentimentality. I took all of their artwork.
We loaded what we could take into the truck and left behind all of our furniture, our dishes, our kitchen items to melt and waited for the impending command “Go” to come to the door.
We are the lucky ones. The order did not come. I did not have to sift, broken-hearted, through ashes of our own memories and try to decipher whether a molten piece of metal was once valuable. I did not have to smell the broken toxic odor of lost belongings tossed with personal artifacts and water-ruined stuff. I did not, as so many have, wonder why I lost so much.
As we unpacked, I still marveled at what we left behind: my childhood Raggedy Ann doll, a book I was writing, my husband’s first microscope, my “Judge Segal” nameplate. It’s not what you take. It’s what you leave behind.
Note to readers: Since this was submitted, the family has not been required to evacuate.
— Anne Segal
