Stories from Inside an old Trunk
Pictures are of the fabrics hanging outside in a breeze, a pink top made of Thai cotton from the late 1960s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangkok, a picture of me wearing the top standing next to Chomsri, one of my Thai students, and me in a skirt I had made from Thai fabric.
In late October, there was a suggestion of snow during a particularly drizzly week. Ice formed on the outdoor steps to Kit’s second story studio and a conversation began. Perhaps we thought it might be time to move his studio over to the house and make use of part of one of our two upstairs guest bedrooms. Then, there followed a series of decisions and discoveries that now have us determined to pull up stakes after 30 years in Missouri and head west sometime in the spring.
But first, back to the smaller move—transporting Kit’s computer and a few files from his large studio across a glade of cedars, oaks and walnut trees to the upstairs of our house. We settled on the north-facing bedroom where there is an old Missouri walnut four-poster bed that by now is as old as I am, gorgeous quilts gracing two opposing walls, two small bookcases, and an old trunk along a wall beneath one of the quilts. A small writing table and chair were tucked into an alcove below a west-facing window.
First, we replaced the trunk with the writing table. A stand-up desk was then moved from Kit’s studio and tucked into the alcove where he can now look out at our creek and the woods beyond. The trunk was moved out of the room and is temporarily in the hallway waiting for a new home. Some years ago, I antiqued it with artichoke colored paint, then draped a piece of fabric, set a tray on top with bouquets of fresh and monthly editions of Gourmet magazine and Martha Stewart’s Living.
What I’d forgotten over those years was the contents within the rarely opened old trunk.
It had become a piece of familiar furniture near our couch, but what lay within faded from my memory. It moved with me from Nebraska to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, from L.A. to Washington, D.C. in the mid 1980s, from D.C. to Missouri in 1988, from MO to New Mexico in early 2005, and finally landed at Boomerang Creek in October 2005.
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I opened the trunk and emptied out its treasures and curiosities. In the trunk’s upper shelf, I found two red wigs that were part of Halloween costumes that my mother made out of mops for sister Molly and me when we were little girls. Molly was Raggedy Ann, and I was Raggedy Andy (with bangs just like I had then). I also found a rubber gorilla mask with black hair that I wore on Halloween with one of my father’s tweed sports coats and a jaunty beret when I was in junior high school. I quickly tossed the gorilla mask and will send the red wigs to my grandnieces, Simone and Sofia.
My green Girl Scout sash covered with badges earned in the 1950s when I was an active scout was among my findings, as well as a bag containing my four wisdom teeth (pulled after an excruciating tooth ache when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand in the late 1960s). The entire bottom of the trunk was filled with locally crafted fabrics from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Pakistan—reminders of the places I traveled to while living in Asia. Folded and tucked away in the trunk, they’ve retained their vibrant colors because they literally haven’t seen the light of day for half a century.
To my delight, I also found dresses and tunics made from bolts of colorful cotton fabrics purchased during my years in Bangkok. It was hot. Cotton was cool. It was easy to take a design to a local seamstress and have a dress with matching headscarf made to order. Every one of them remains as fresh as they were when I wore them in my early 20s. Sleeveless and as colorful as the flowers on the ubiquitous bougainvillea vines that took the place of paint on wooden houses throughout the countryside, they were light and breezy and easy to travel in at a time when jeans had not yet taken over the world of fashion.
On a recent blustery day, all of the remaining leaves on the trees around our house blew down and blanketed the gardens and glade. It was the perfect day to hang these gorgeous fabrics along the porch to air out and breathe again. Among the Thai dresses and Asian fabrics, I also found a 2.5-yard piece of fabric from the Herman Miller furniture store in Los Angeles where my sister Molly worked in the early 1970s. How I ended up with it all these years later I cannot remember, but perhaps in the months ahead, it too will see the light again in a house somewhere in Nevada City, CA.
So many stories have reemerged from that old trunk, each one a memory that I’m now revisiting. Treasures and curiosities. Each one loved once, and now again.