I Have Always Been a Hoarder: The Childhood Moments I Could Never Bring Myself to Forget

A Bit of a Hoarder

I've always been a bit of a hoarder.

As a little girl, I was far too sentimental. I struggled with basic things, like decluttering my toys and saying goodbye to the ones that came in Happy Meals, or one time, throwing out a cheese string wrapper after watching Toy Story 3 — clenching my imagination closed at the thought of the plastic burning up in the landfill so I could, in good faith, place the wrapper gently on top of the trash.

I never liked the idea of putting anything down, regardless of how carefully I did so. Though I loved the idea of picking things up. I'm always looking for the thing that only twinkles ever so slightly; the thing everyone else walks right past.

The thing I shove in my back pocket. The thing I don't tell anyone I put there.

Standing at the Base of My Trove

Now, I stand at the base of my trove, and I am overwhelmed by its vastness — by the responsibility to bleed every last drop of meaning out of each thing I have kept here, untouched. Sometimes I stand in front of my trove, and I sort through my hoarded things until I find the right one.

But sometimes they find me first.

The Swing Set

I sat on the swings as a twelve year old girl, watching my older sister with her friends. They were fourteen, and graduating that year. They mindlessly swung on the swing set beside me, trading stories from their graduation trip and comparing photos of the dresses they would each wear in a couple weeks at their ceremony.

I shared their joy briefly, smiling along and kicking my dangling feet in the sand, until remembering that what was only a couple of weeks for them, was a couple of years for me.

This was a memory I hoarded, though it wasn't particularly memorable. I can't remember which of my sister's friends were there, or if it was a cloudy or sunny day, but I remember the moment like it was yesterday, and I remember knowing that I always would.

When I eventually graduated elementary school within that couple of years, I thought of the swing set as I sat amongst my classmates, straightening my necklace over and over again. Closing my eyes, taking a breath, and letting my fourteen year old feet dangle, I could nearly hear the same old chains rattling in the wind.

When I later graduated high school, I thought of the swing set as I sat in front of my computer screen. This memory, now nearly a decade old, still felt more genuine than the livestreamed ceremony of land acknowledgments and mispronounced names.

The swing set is one of many. I knew which moments would matter before I understood why any of it did.

The Rotten Egg

Sometimes the things I hoarded were things I didn't mean to keep — moments that I didn't know, standing inside them, that I'd be back. But here they still are, nestled at the bottom of the same trove.

The trees were tall around me, taller than any trees I'd seen at home. The gravel crunched under my crocs with each step. I walked to the park with my sister and our new friends when one of them called out, "Last one there's a rotten egg!" The girls broke into a sprint, leaving gaps in the gravel and sending dust into the air.

I watched them run and didn't care to catch up. Being called a rotten egg didn't scare me the way it scared them. That, and I was watching the grown-up women walking side by side, unbothered by who got there first.

I wanted to be like them more than I didn't want to be a rotten egg.

My Nonno's Pajama Pants

Not everything I've kept makes sense. My nonno's old pajama pants are falling apart at the hems my nonna sewed — hems I could easily fix, and cannot bring myself to restitch. I don't keep them because they're useful, or because they mean anything I could explain. I keep them because they still feel warm.

The Berries Over the Fence

I looked out the window from my seat on the bus and saw a man on the sidewalk with his arm shoved deep into hanging tree branches, up to the shoulder. I couldn't tell if he'd lost something in there or was hiding something in there, and I never found out which. Before I could keep watching, some part of me had already left him for a tree I remembered from years ago, one my nonna used to reach into the same way.

I reached into my purse, pulling out my phone and opening my notes app. I started writing about a berry I used to pick with my nonna when I was young, whenever we had seen one of the trees reaching over a backyard fence. This was a memory I thought of often, yet a memory I never looked at too deeply.

My nonna grew one of these trees in her own backyard, but that never stopped her from picking berries off branches that crossed over fences and hung above the sidewalk. She picked them without a second thought. I never could.

The piece I wrote opened with a description of the berry, with my consideration of its true existence or the possibility that I had made it up entirely. Then the further I wrote, the deeper I looked at it. The piece shifted from a childhood memoir, to a philosophical consideration of inheriting the eyes my nonna sees through, yet not the nerve that runs behind them.

Bleeding My Hoarded Things

I'd started bleeding my hoarded things more recently. Around the same time I'd begun struggling to find more things to hoard.

The twelve year old who couldn't wait to graduate eighth grade now keeps putting off graduating university.

The little girl who envied the grown women is now a woman in no rush to become one.

The girl who never dared to reach for the berries is now a woman who could, but still won't.

But she's also the woman standing in all the rooms she used to only picture.

The Birthday Wish

On my twenty-fourth birthday, my best friend's boyfriend asked me what I wished for myself for that year. Initially I was going to tell him I wanted a better job. A simple wish. An adult wish. But before I could respond, he stopped me, clarifying he didn't want a boring wish. He wanted a wish I truly wanted, something dreamlike.

I slowly collected the moment and tucked it away as I answered his question with my wish for this year, which was to have my writing published. A wish that I soon realized was much closer to being granted than it appeared to be.

Exactly Where I Always Wanted to Be

Now I stand at the base of my trove, looking at all the collected moments of my life — exactly where I always wanted to be.

The responsibility to bleed each moment just right, to not let any memory I've hoarded go to waste — it is an honour.

It is also the heaviest thing I have ever kept.