Letting Go: The Things You Take With You and The Things You Leave Behind

The hardest part about giving up the apartment in Bogota is what it meant to me. It was mine. I didn't actually own it --my mother did-- but I had carte blanche to set it up exactly as I wanted. And I did.

The Living Room: Space, Colour, Light, Proportion.
I painted two walls of the living room red. Bold and bright. It made me happy. The color set off the painting by young Colombian artist Jhon Jairo Jiménez Robayo, a brightly coloured yet dark, seductive cityscape that insinuates both excitement and eternal damnation. It takes up the entire wall and probably only works in the space because of the 10 ft ceiling. The view looking the other way in the living room way is peaceful. An abstract by the same artist, inspired by the sea in San Andrés, occupies the entire opposite wall. The light blue cushions on the wrought-iron couch suggest a tropical veranda. The coffee table in the centre was made by ceramic artist Camilo Torres. The living room was energizing looking one way, and calming looking the other. The overall feeling was playful, like living in a child's paint box; primary red, blue, yellow. It had just the right balance.

The Kitchen
Camilo also made the ceramic countertops in the kitchen. To fit the narrow space of the galley kitchen, the counters on either side are 55 cm deep, leaving 1.10 m in the centre. Just enough room. The counters were also my height. Over the counters and under them, I had as many cupboards made as possible. That way nothing ever had to clutter and disrupt the beauty of the countertops. I had a gas stove, inheritance from Jenny, a refrigerator with the biggest crisper drawers and freezer that would fit the available space, a dishwasher that I got by trading Jenny's old refrigerator to Estela, and a wine rack over the pantry. The ceiling rack for the pots and pans was a gift and I loved the way that the cookware looked on display. I had bought the set of pots and pans during the year that I took off from university between my undergraduate and master's degree and I worked in the Housewares Department at Eaton's Cavendish Mall. It was a cook's kitchen with everything perfectly at hand and I loved it.

My Room
In my bedroom the wall behind the bed was hyacinth blue, with a painting by Ecuadoran artist Fernando Toledo. The painting reflects the colours of the Andes. I brought this painting back with me a year and a half ago. The other walls were white, with two black and white abstract nude photographs by Houston artist Paul Talley, which I will take with me on this trip. The view outside the fifth floor windows looks into the tree tops. I called my bedroom the tree house.

The Boys' Rooms
The boys had a similar sense of appropriation of the space. This was the first place where they each had their own bedroom, painted the colour of their choice. Matt's room was blue, and he always meant to paint a mural on the wall, but somehow it didn't happen. He had a lovely collection of cactuses in the window, several of which were inherited from his friend Diego when he moved to Mexico. William's room was red and yellow. He wanted to paint it bright yellow, which can be a bit strident. We compromised on the shade of yellow in his giraffe sheets, a tone thereafter known as giraffe yellow. Red wall, yellow wall, dark blue blinds: three solid color fields, his room was abstract expressionism.

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The Things You Take With You and the Things You Leave Behind

I had already brought many of the most precious things with me: the photo albums, the Christmas stockings and cookie cutters, the 1961 copy of The Night Before Christmas with illustrations by Gyo Fujikawa, the cosy fleece blanket that was the boys' crib blanket and became the nap blanket, a few serving pieces from the Carmen de Viboral dishes, the ceramic vase by Cuban artist Zurina Verdaguer.

Things I Am Taking With Me Now
My good cooking knife from the kitchen.
The annual letters that the boys wrote to Santa Claus when they were little.
The copies of the letters that I wrote home when I moved to Colombia in 1989.
The red and green pepper lights that garlanded the pot hanger in the kitchen. Technically these are Christmas lights but I think that every kitchen needs some festive lights year-round and peppers are a proper culinary motif.
I am having VHS home video tapes transferred to DVD format.

The two Jhon Jairo Jiménez paintings will follow eventually. They are large, rigid pieces and will require special shipping. I am not moving them now because I would have nowhere to put them, but having made the decision that I will bring them one day makes me happy.

Things We Gave Away

Previously, I had already sold most of my books, CDs, and gave away a ton of clothes.

On this trip Matt and I pulled the storage boxes out of the attic and made some hard decisions about what to take, what to keep, and what to give away.

The camping gear: The MEC tent and sleeping bag, day packs, folding camp stools (the latter used more at theatre festivals than camping). My worn hiking stick is actually the item that I find hardest to part with. These and my set of specialized baking supplies, a small collection of odd ingredients, essences and tools, went to Sally, my best hiking, theatre and literary festival buddy.

The Christmas tree and decorations. These went to my friend Estela who had never put up a tree. In keeping with Colombian tradition, she always had a nativity scene in her living room. Now she will have both a tree and a nativity scene and I am glad that the tree has "found a good home."

The wooden train set: Over the years the boys had accumulate pieces for the wooden train set. It had loads of track, a bridge, a roundhouse, and several trains. Matt made the decision to let these go. They are going to the Cigarra daycare centre in the Puertos del Paraíso neighbourhood of the Ciudad Bolívar district in south Bogota. Sally's sister-in-law Carolyn sponsors the daycare. It is so well organized and provides an essential service in a depressed part of the city. http://www.cigarraonline.org/
The Fisher Price school bus and cars, the foam alphabet carpet, and assorted baby clothes are going there too. Everything will be well appreciated. I can't think of a better thing to do with these.

My knitting needles. Julie from book club got those. She hosts a knitting and quilting circle. Someone will appreciate getting them.

José Miguel had given me the fondue pot as a Christmas present. It has gone back to him.

Estela and Leonardo had given me the large crystal vase as a wedding gift. It is too big, heavy, and fragile to transport. It has gone back to her.

***

Sharon said to me, "Don't burden your children with things." She is right. The fact that I feel sentimental about certain items does not mean that my children do. In practice though, Matt is more sentimental than I am. We pulled the boxes out of the attic yesterday and spent several hours sorting through them. The process was hard on me, but I think that it was even harder on him. Letting go of the artefacts of childhood cost him. We appreciate things not for their monetary value but for their symbolic significance. The past is what forms our identity and it is necessary to recognize and value things that we loved and lived. William, at least on the surface, is less sentimental about material things. I am bringing him his giraffe sheets and elefantinho. We packed cow in the box to store, along with some of the childhood books.

Getting rid of things can be liberating, but it is also important to pause and appreciate their significance and ask whether the memento should be brought forward into the present. We are the product of everything that we have lived, and the past deserves respect, if not celebration.

The Practical Reader and The Sentimental Reader

My Books I: The Practical Reader

I have quite a few books in my apartment, seven shelves full. I like books. I like the way they look, standing in order (by subject for the non-fiction and by author for fiction) on the shelves. I like having them and seeing them, but I am not especially possessive about my books. I don't mind lending them, I don't even really mind it when I don't get them back. Maybe it is the librarian in me, but I think that books should be enjoyed and circulated.

This might be the last place I ever live where I have large bookshelves. I have always had books. As a child I had lots of books. At university I studied English literature, and that meant acquiring lots of books. The nightstand in my bedroom always has a pile of books on it, waiting to be read.

That changed about a year ago. I got a Kindle, an electronic book reader. Now all the latest books I have acquired have been in e-reader format. It makes more sense: because I read mostly in English, and English-language books tend to be expensive and hard to come by here, I was buying a lot of books when I travelled. Half of the room in my suitcase was always taken up with books. Now I just load the book files onto the Kindle and I am good to go. It is a more rational way of reading and transporting books. It has a feature that lets you underline text and take notes, and it saves these annotations to a text file that can be transferred to the computer so that you can work on them later. This is very practical, as is the ability to search the pages for strings of text to find a certain quote or reference.

Still, I'll miss the texture of "dead-tree" books, the smell of paper and ink, the slight crackle as you break open a new book, knowing exactly how much you have left in the book because you can see how the pages have run through your hands like sand through an hourglass. I like to underline and write notes in the margins of book and, if the publisher has been so accommodating, I will write ample observations on the blank pages at the back. My books tend to be thoroughly defaced. You really need to have a hardcopy book if you want to have it signed by the author at the Hay Festival (asking an author sign your Kindle is practically tantamount to asking a rock star to sign your boob because you don't have the album jacket, except perhaps it's nerdier).

Some people augured that the advent of electronic media would mean the end of reading. I would argue that the opposite has taken place: I think that more people are reading and writing now than ever before because the media make it both easier and more necessary. Nowadays, when you want to find out what is happening with a breaking news story, you check an online news site (or Twitter), before newspapers, radio, or television. Email has changed the way we communicate. It is more important than ever to have good written communication skills for business correspondence. More people write personal letters too, knowing that friends and family will receive them quickly and for free, along with the attached photos and videos. As to the Kindle, I now have access to more books, easily available and at reasonable cost (plus there is a plethora of titles that are available for free), than I have had for years.

The days of the dead-tree book are numbered and although I feel a certain nostalgia for the format, I think that the new media are a boon to anyone who reads for pleasure or information.

My Books II: The Sentimental Reader

When I moved to Colombia I brought three books with me: a Spanish grammar from the basic class I took prior to departure; the South American Handbook, a comprehensive travel guide that served me well over the years; and the Harrowsmith Cookbook, Volume 1. Over years I accumulated a lot more books. Most have been readings for my book club, but I also picked up a number of Colombian cookbooks and other books for general reading. Plus every time someone left the country, there was a big sell-off/giveaway of books. Each year when I traveled, I slowly picked up books that I had left behind and brought them to add to my bookshelf here. Now I am looking at the possibility of moving back, I have to decide which books I will take back with me.

I have seven shelves of books in this apartment. It is clear that I cannot take all of them with me when I move. Still, the thought of having to part with these books that I have appreciated over the years brings on a pang on nostalgia.

So what books will I pack to go? First of all some children's books: The Night Before Christmas, and the collection of Winnie the Pooh and the poetry of A.A. Milne. These are books that I have had since I was three-years-old. I dug these books out of the boxes where they were stored in my mother's basement and brought them here to share with my sons when they were little.

The Harrowsmith Cookbook: This was a book that I brought with me in my suitcase when I first arrived. Recipes and cooking are deeply ingrained cultural traditions. This cookbook helped me through the rough times when I felt homesick. Even if I couldn't be back home, I could recreate the smell and flavors. It is a heavy, bulky book to pack and I wouldn't mind just buying a new copy when I get back, but it is out of print, so I'll have to take my copy back with me. La Cocina colombiana (Vol. 1): This was one of the first Colombian cookbooks I bought. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Colombian cuisine. It will come back with me as a reminder of the flavors and dishes of my second homeland.

The final book that will make it into my bag for the return trip is The Shock of the New. This book on modern art was the textbook for a class I took in university that looked at art, literature, and social-political context during the period of 1914 to the 1970's. The class was an epiphany experience for me, in terms of understanding the social significance of art. Both of the boys have always been interested in art, and we have referred to this book many times over the years.

I hold onto my books as a testimony to the past. I enjoy and use them on a daily basis (at least the cookbooks). Books will continue to be part of my life as I head into the future, but the physical book format is in decline. Really, the number of books that I need to own as physical objects is very small.

The basic Spanish grammar and the 1989 South American Handbook will stay behind. The former I have mastered and no longer need. The latter has been superceded. Now when I travel, I look up information on the Internet. The book still sits on my bookshelf for sentimental reasons. It is a testimony to my marathon trip around South American in 1992 (the Discovering America Tour). But the world has changed over the course of the past 23 years and the book is outdated. It is time to move on.

***

I'll be at the Hay literary festival in Cartagena from January 26th to 31st. Unfortunately I won't have Internet access at the place where I am staying this year, so I will not be posting updates as I go. You may look forward to the first reviews of the conferences next week.


Photo by Joan Carmichael