Suitcases

I used to run back and forth from house to house when I was a child. My parents were divorced, so it was all about who had the ownership of me for the next 24-48 hours. In this regard, I've always had my suitcase packed.

I was ten years old when my mother set me down in our downstairs living room, which was now her bedroom. My father and her had been arguing about custody for what seemed like years, but was easily at least one entire year. I still don’t understand why people argue so much when they divorce. As a child it scared me, now I just think, “Ok, you don’t like each other anymore, we fucking get it.” My mother always had a certain scent about her, something like lilac mixed in with a soft scent of warmth and just a drop of sting. The blanket that covered the old wooden frame of her bed was white with rose-colored flowers covering it.

My sisters had already spoken to her about where and when they wanted to live in each parent’s house. Them both being four and six years older then me, what choice did I really have? I simply nodded and smiled as I had learned to do many years before. The easiest way to not rock the boat. Whenever the boat rocked, someone was easily going to sink to the bottom, and I was too busy trying to keep everyone afloat to even consider causing my own storm. They had come up with some ridiculous plan in which we would go back and forth between houses month-to-month and then weekend by weekend, and spend Wednesdays with the opposite parent of whom had that month. Does that make sense to you? Me either, and at ten, I was like, huh? So essentially there would be weeks where I were with my mom on Monday, Tuesday, my father on Wednesday, my mom on Thursday, my father on Friday, Saturday, and back to my moms on Sunday.

My first suitcase was a sky blue plastic case with silver running around the edges. It had sharp pointed claws that latched it. The inside was falling apart, made of satin, with elastic strips on the side. It was the perfect size for enough clothing for the weekend. If I packed right, I could take it to a parent’s house on Wednesday and if I were still with that parent for the weekend, leave it through Thursday with just enough clothing in my backpack for that day. This often caused me to wear dirty jeans to school. Which I thought nothing of, but there was always someone who noticed. Once it was this girl Katie whom pointed out that I was always in dirty clothing. I never thought of myself that way, but she was the “dirty kid”, the one that every school has. So if she said my jeans were dirty, they must have been. That’s when at 11 I learned how to do the laundry. To this day, I love doing laundry, it calms me. I think I’m more so drawn to the way that something is cleaning, cleansing, starting over, repairing.

One day I decided that I no longer liked the inside of the beat up blue suitcase, so I tore out the inside clothe and cleaned all the glue from the inside. I had some fabric picked out and I was going to make it beautiful. When my mother saw what I had done, she wasn’t so impressed. Throwing the suitcase down she yelled at me about how that had been an aunts of hers, the suitcase was the only memory she had of her, and now I had ruined it. She burst into tears and left me standing there. When I tried to tell her I was sorry, she simply told me to do whatever the hell I wanted, clearly I was going to anyways. I believe I was 12 or 13. She clearly didn’t understand my flare for design. If I had known that for the next few days I was going to be the root of her depression, I would have left the damn suitcase the way it was.

My second suitcase was also from my mother, it was brown leather with a belt like strap that wrapped around the back and latched in the front with a huge gold buckle. Having already learned my lesson, I knew the suitcase was perfect and I had no reason to change a thing about it. I didn’t bother to ask about the history of my new divorce gift, and for the next 5 years I treated it as if a gift from God. This suitcase helped me move my belongings up into my sisters room when she moved from my mother to live with my dad, it held my belongs when I ran back and forth from house to house. Every few years one of my parents would move, so I simply kept packing and unpacking. Yet I stayed in the same school, it was just all over town. This suitcase accompanied me back and forth to New York my senior year in high school to visit my then boyfriend. It saw Australia with me, and eventually in 2003 my brown leather friend went into retirement.

In the Michigan we have graduation parties, you invite your friends, family, and everyone else to come and see your house, congratulate you and bring you gifts. I, as eloquently as possible, set up my party to all be in red, black, and silver. Yes, I was openly gay, and it clearly showed. After everyone had left my party, I was given a gift from my father and stepmother. It was a brand new set of luggage. Not just a suitcase, but a four piece set of forest green matching luggage. I had plans to move to New York, I was leaving in one week, and this was my father’s way of saying he was okay with it and finally accepting my decision.

Of course, at the time I wasn’t thinking that, I was thinking that he couldn’t wait to get me out of there. I was thinking that he was happy to have me gone. I later learned that him and my mother both cried a lot the day I drove away. In my angry and frustration on more then one occasion I had made it very clear that I had no intentions of ever coming back home to visit that god forsaken town. Yes, I have been back, and I do love it. At least now I love it, growing up I hated it.

Now I still have those green suitcases sitting in my closet, I use them when I travel and I think of how much of a peace offering it was for my father to give them to me. I still keep boxes packed when I move, and I move around a lot. Partially because this is New York City and everyone just seems to switch apartments a lot, and partially because I don’t know any better. I don’t stay anywhere too long because I think it frightens me and I’m not sure what a “home” feels like. I do however know that when I leave New York I always think about how I can’t wait to get back home. And when I think of home, I think of being able to walk to dinner, sit outside, enjoy red wine, maybe grab a show, and always have a friend around. I think about looking out over the west river and thanking God that I don’t live in Jersey anymore, and that some how I have managed to live in midtown Manhattan and not be struggling everyday.

Behind my set of green suitcases there sits a brown leather suitcase, I haven’t thrown it out. I don’t know it’s full history, and I don’t want to be responsible for another rainy day.