Hoarders

During our move, I discovered that I had lost something. The black-and-white wedding photo of my Indian grandparents. And the one of my Indian-Moluccan grandparents. Four people without whom I wouldn’t be here. Four faces that become increasingly valuable as time passes. During the packing process, I carefully stored them away, because I was afraid I would lose them. Ironically, that was exactly what I no longer knew where they were.

Moving is a strange activity. You don’t just lift boxes from one house to the next. You are moving a life. One layer at a time. Year after year. Memory after memory. A set of dishes that has lasted for three houses. A coat that you never wear again but also can’t throw away. Drawings by children who are now taller than the kitchen table they used to color on.

And while I was unpacking the boxes looking for the photos of my grandparents, I found something else. A letter. From my grandmother. The same Indian grandmother who is in one of the photos that I couldn’t find anymore. I had lost that letter years ago, because I had stored it so well that I no longer knew where it was.

I come from a family of archivists. We preserve photos, letters, recipes, and stories. But also grief, longing, and sometimes even entire histories. Many families with roots in Indonesia and the Moluccas might recognize that. What was taken in suitcases, boxes, and memories was often carefully stored out of love. Out of protection because life continued and you had to make the best of it.

I wonder how much of what was carried away is actually so carefully stored that no one knows exactly where it is anymore. Families work like moving boxes. You write on the outside: keep it, but over time no one remembers what’s inside anymore. Yet those things don’t disappear. They wait. In a closet, in a story, in a body. In a next generation. Until someone decides to go looking.

My grandmother’s letter contained a sentence that stayed with me. That not everything that disappears from sight is truly gone. I had to laugh when I read it. And then I cried. Because I thought about all the things families carry with them. Things that pass from hand to hand, from generation to generation, until no one knows exactly where they began.

I think that people who preserve are particularly good at it. In preserving things. We fold things up. We carefully put them away. For later. For when there is more time. For when it hurts less. For when someone asks us about it. And sometimes there is so much care involved in preserving that we forget where we left it.

But important things don't just disappear. They take root. In a story that is told over and over again. In a habit that no one remembers anymore who it was from. In a glance that suddenly looks like your grandmother's. They stay. Between the years. Waiting. Until someone opens a box. Until someone asks a question. Until someone goes searching.

I still haven’t found the photos. But somewhere between yesterday’s packing and tomorrow’s unpacking, something was waiting for me that hadn’t been lost. A thread back. To her. To the past. To everything we think we have stored away, but which sometimes manages to find us exactly at the right moment. Sometimes you look for something and don’t find it. And sometimes you find something you weren’t looking for. And it turns out that exactly what was supposed to be kept is exactly what was needed.