Pandora's Box

Yesterday I took an unintentional trip down memory lane. Actually I think it was a trip down something less lovely than a lane...maybe a trip down a dirt road with ruts and rocks and I rolled my ankle a few times as I went along.

I was down in our basement looking around for some things when I stood there looking at one corner of the room piled high with packed boxes. A few years ago my dad found himself in a place where he had lost his job and could no longer afford the mortgage on his house. He didn't know where he'd be going but he knew that he'd soon have to leave the house because the bank was going to take it. Our plan was for him to pack a few things that he absolutely couldn't do without, and then to hold an estate sale, selling off all the rest of the things in the house which would hopefully provide him with enough cash for a few months rent on an apartment yet to be determined. That estate sale was absolutely miserable. Our add in the paper just gave dates and times and said "Everything must go. Make me an offer." (we didn't have time to price tag everything.) We got to his house the first morning and there was a line of people standing at the front door and almost all the way down the driveway. I was terrified and pretty much in a constant state of anxiousness. When we opened the doors, there were people everywhere and we were so overwhelmed and I just wanted to hide in a corner and cry. I felt like we shouldn't be there and this shouldn't be happening. I remember one old, creepy guy holding up a green, one-foot corner shelf thing and asking me how much I wanted for it. I said "I don't know, ten bucks?". And he laughed and then yelled at me like I was nuts, like how in my right mind could I possibly expect him to pay ten dollars for such a piece of junk. That was seriously one of the top five most embarrassing moments of my life (and I do a LOT of embarrassing things) because I just broke down and cried right in the guy's face. It was pathetic.

Ok, so the point is that before the sale from hell, my dad packed SO. MUCH. STUFF. He's a total pack-rat and just didn't want to let go of anything. He packed an entire box of travel coffee mugs and those reusable Big Gulps cups that come with ribbed straws. And an entire box of baseball caps...many of which had 3-foot brims with profanity printed all over them. Never know when you'll need 25 of those babies. At the time, Joe and I had newly moved into our house and we had a whole basement with nothing in it, so we offered to let my dad use our space to store his boxes and some furniture until he found an apartment.

Well yesterday, here I was four years later, looking at all of those boxes full of the things he couldn't live without. They were still completely taped up and I had no idea what was in them because I honestly just never had the energy to open them and look through things that made me relive too many memories, which were just that...memories of a life I once lived and a parent I once had, and which now seemed a million miles and a thousand years away with no binds at all to my current existence. But I tend to be an under-analyzer and sometimes I choose to just do things without thinking too much about them or else I may never do them at all so I started in on opening the boxes. There were lots of Christmas decorations that made me smile and I could picture the exact place in our house where my mom would place them every year. There were a few sets of ugly dishes and some pillows and some blankets. Then there were of course, the big gulps mugs and the baseball caps. A whole box of shoes (most of which were purchased prior to the Ice Storm), and then one box that turned my memory lane into a confusing and difficult to navigate dirt road.

My dad was a city Fire Fighter. And man, when you're a kid, that is just the freekin COOLEST thing anybody's parent can do. And mine did it as his ACTUAL JOB. Playing that card always got me instant respect and street cred as a kid. Sometimes he used to drive a fire truck to our neighborhood and park in right in the middle of the cul-de-sac we lived on so that us and all our friends could play on it (which is totally illegal by the way and I apologize to all city of Rochester residents for this gross misuse of your tax dollars but again, I was 8 and it was awesome). We'd climb the ladder and put on the helmets and honk the horn. In school, my classes often took field trips to my dad's firehouse and by the time I was five I could not only slide down a fire pole fearlessly, but I could climb all the way up one as well and I'd show off my skills. I felt like the absolute center of the universe during those times. I mean, I absolutely beamed with pride. Nobody's dad was a cool or brave or exciting as mine. He might as well have been Superman himself. Up until around the time of the estate sale, I had been a fireman's daughter, it was a giant piece of my identity and I was SO proud of it.

So when I opened the box of all my dad's firefighting paraphernalia, completely covered in dust, it was like a shot to the chest. There were a few dye cast models of fire trucks, and a small porcelain statue of a guy sliding down a fire pole with his pants falling down (typical). There was a big, red, metal box that you would find on the wall of a school or business that has that lever you can pull to sound the fire alarm...that used to be on the wall in our house with a telephone inside of it. I pulled out a few other things and then at the bottom of the box I saw a black helmet with a badge on the front that read "LIEUT 1". Anybody in my extended family would know exactly what that is at first glance. It's my grandfather's fire helmet, which he wore in the city of Rochester in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. I pulled it out and blew some dust off of it and underneath it sad my dad's helmet, a little newer, a little more modern (they added face masks for the next generation) but a little more worn. I couldn't bring myself to pick that one up. But I couldn't believe that I found my grandfather's helmet and that it had been down there all taped up in a box for almost 5 years. I brought it upstairs and washed it off and put it on a shelf in our kids' playroom that holds a lot of family photos from a few generations.

I come from a long line of firefighters. And it's always been something I'm so proud of. But ever since my son was born (who my father has never met, by the way) I cringe every time I see a t-shirt that would fit him with a fire truck on it. It's like I don't want that to touch him because it's no longer something I can call mine. I don't know if that makes any sense. I can't bring myself to reconcile this amazing heritage I have with this current lack of pride I feel in my family situation.

So my son doesn't wear anything that glorifies the heroism of firefighters and my dad's helmet sits dusty in a box in my basement. Maybe it's because my hero let me down. Maybe it's because of the constant twinge of sadness I have in the back of my brain because my son has never met his grandfather. Or maybe it's because 5 years of prayers still haven't brought my dad to a place where he realizes what he's given up and what he's missing. I don't know but either way this is where I am.

And as I type this, I can hear my son giggling upstairs because my husband is pulling some silly antic just to make him laugh. And I can feel my Jesus holding my heart when it hurts. And these are the times when I know that heroes still exist.