welcome June 28, 2004 Issue

Resilience—and home

Warren Bolon

Just The Scent Of Cardboard and packing tape.

That's all it takes, and I'm back in the business end of a rented truck on what might have been the only warm day in New England last month. At least I'm unloading the truck in most of these micro–memories — not in front of our former home looking for the nth time at the remaining few unoccupied cubic feet near the ramp, wondering not if but why. Why so much stuff? When we'd already found new homes for so much furniture and miscellany?

I searched through some book boxes a few nights ago. They were still mostly unopened, scattered like a badly designed cityscape in an upper–floor room. Appropriately enough, I was looking for a copy of Things Fall Apart, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe's novel about a man's life and family and tribal culture unraveling as missionaries and colonialism arrive in Africa. Finally I found the book, in a box cleverly labeled "books." Mental note: Next time, have more fun with labels.

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