The garage of wonders

I have spent far too much time in the garage today. This morning it was cleaning up the terrible, slicky clear goo that gushes from diapers when they explode (apparently a diaper found its way into a load of wash). I had to shake out every sock, shirt, and sheet separately to try and dislodge the goo and then I had to clean out the washing machine with paper towels and then I ran the machine with just bleach in it and spilled the bleach on my favorite sweat shirt. And I spent most of the day cleaning and unpacking boxes. And right in the height of the disorder (that moment when all the organizing projects you are simultaneously working on: folding the laundry, organizing Maddy's baby clothes, doing the dishes, moving all the books off the bookshelf so that you can move it...), right in the climax of the mess, there was a knock on my door and a boy that I don't know very well from the ward stopped by to bring us Merry Christmas breadsticks. His wife is Hawaiian and they said "Mele Kalikimaka" on them. He has never been to our house before and for all he knows, it is always looking like it threw up on itself. And for all he knows, I am always wearing sweatshirts with blaring bleach stains dripping down them. All I could do was laugh and eat the whole plate of breadsticks before Matt came home.

It was just that kind of day. But in one of the boxes that I opened today I found the last ten years of my life in journals. When I was little I used to keep journals in hard bound books but sometime in Jr. high I switched to using three ring binders and now I have this collection of worn binders in a variety of colors. My mission journals have pictures and letters shoved into the pockets. My freshman year in college has date mementos glued to the inside cover. But the most curious one is a thinnish green binder from right after I got home from my mission. It is one of those binders covered in clear plastic so you can put pictures in it if you want. There is a black and white photo of me haphazardly placed in the front cover. I am sitting on a rock looking a little bit sad, a little bit confused and a whole lot like I felt. I look like I was trying to figure out the rest of my life all at once, the classic error of mistaking impatience for faith.

I sat down in the middle of all the clutter and read a few entries. Some of them are obviously written in class, scrolled on notebook paper with some of the frayed edges flipping out. Others are on leftover archival journal paper that my mom gave me somewhere around seventeen. It took me back. I remember that being a hard time and I am grateful that a twenty-three year old Shelley was wise enough to record it.

Matt and I have commented to each other that after you get married so much of the angst that you were accustomed to dissipates, which is good of course, but every once-in-awhile I miss the drive it gave me to articulate what I was feeling.

Last year, I switched my journal back from binders to hardbound journals. They will store better and will be more uniform. More adult and archival.

But not the same.