My parents' storage room

I spent some time in my parents' storage room in the basement this past Sunday. My father had implied for quite a long time that he thought it would be appropriate for me to come and go through my stuff down there and decide what I wanted to keep and what not. He's made it sound like it would be something good for me but I know he's just fishing for me to get my stuff out of there so they don't have to keep it anymore... :)

And I'm okey with that. I mean, I haven't lived with my parents in ten years (actually, on Saturday it's exactly ten years since I moved to my own apartment) so why would they still keep my things?

To be honest I didn't think I had that much still left in their storage room and I was right about that. My sister has waaaay more stuff there... I did, however, find some books on a shelf that were mine. Books from a book club I belonged to for years. I had saved some of my favourites and seeing them on Sunday made my heart skip a beat. I remembered all the nights I had spent reading those and crying my eyes out. (I cry easily and always have. Used to loooove books that had me crying.) Decided to bring them home and read through them once again before deciding what to do with them. I might sell them to a second hand book store. Or give them to someone with a young daughter.

Found a lot of school books; both textbooks and notebooks. I flipped through some of them and was appaled to see my awkward hand writing. And my awful drawings. I've never been able to draw things. Found maths books with almost no mistakes in them. Looked through the extra math book I got in first grade and felt impressed with my ability to solve those problems. Some of them made me confused now. At almost thirty...

I can't tell you how many note books I found that were beginnings to little stories, or novels. Detective stories. Science fiction stories. Boy-meets-girl stories. I had forgotten all of those. I do like to write and there was a time when I spent my evenings writing instead of knitting. Had plans on writing a novel. Did my research. Traced out a plot. Got to know some of the characters. Started writing. Investigated different writing courses as I felt committed. But then things happened and my world got turned upside down for a couple of years. Landing on my feet again I couldn't get back to that writing. Not that story. And not anything else with the same committment.

This summer, my urge for writing has awakened again. I've found myself composing texts in my head. Silently. Have found myself looking at the world more through my writing eyes than my normal everyday eyes. The eyes that I've developed during the last couple of years. While working, while knitting, while forming a relationship with another adult, while growing up again. During my vacation I talked to my boyfriend about it. He was sitting on the porch drawing a picture of the view we had from the cottage. Told him how I longed for writing again. Even though it's all very blurry. We talked about starting a schedule of one or two nights a week for writing and drawing.

Standing in my parents' basement seeing those attempts at writing stories had me feeling all fuzzy inside. I got warm. Even though I felt a bit embarrassed at the quality of my attempts... Ten-years-olds can be very ambitious without knowing much.

But I guess that goes for thirty-year-olds too.