Optimistic Hoarder: Box 004
Box: 004
Provenance: Lahaina, HI
Description: Backpack in a blue aloha print fabric
Contents:
Unopened travel size Poo-Pourri™ in Vanilla Mint
ProCamera Hawaii business card
Individually-wrapped coffee candy
Paper with lottery number picks from coworkers
Worn yet unused leather luggage tag with vaguely Hawaiian scene
Red leather business card holder with her own business cards
Eyeglass prescription document
Three shell leis
Oil of Gladness anointing oil
Two Clipper™ cards
Three unlabeled red gel “mystery” pills
Paper transit ticket for SF Muni
Laptop with a sticker of my logo on it
Two small (6”?) flags on wooden sticks (trans pride, rainbow pride)
Sealed KN95
Travel size Hawaiian Tropic™ tanning lotion
Travel size Hawaiian Tropic™ Island Sport sunscreen
Roll of packing tape (new)
Disposable razor
Fabric face mask
Two bottles of hand sanitizer
Tums (black cherry and watermelon)
Hawaii-themed luggage strap
Plumeria incense sticks
Small tactical flashlight
Travel pack of tissue
European plug adapter
Fujifilm™ charging cord
8-pack reproduction Crayola™ crayon tin, still shrink-wrapped
Partial roll of produce bags from a grocery store
Loose “mystery” pills (likely Tylenol or ibuprofen)
Notebook
Valentine’s day card and stickers from me and my wife, dated 2022
Badass Coffee sticker
Ruminations:
This is the backpack my mother had with her on the plane when she moved back to the Bay Area from Lahaina in November 2022. An unexpected side-effect of this project is that I find myself buying fewer things. The sheer amount of unopened or barely used items I am unearthing has caused me to reflect deeply on my own consumption and participation in capitalism (and I am horrified).
I cried when I pulled out the raggedy little pride flags from her bag. My mother was so fiercely and loudly supportive of my wife and I. She would absolutely bite the head off of anyone who even thought about looking at us sideways, literally or figuratively. She didn’t support us for kudos because I know that she shouted our praises in rooms we were never in to people we would never meet. By extension, she became a ferocious defender and friend of any queer and/or trans person she met, especially the many trans women she worked with at her last job. She wouldn’t put up with customer’s shit either aimed at her or anyone she worked with and she eventually got fired for telling one too many shitty customers to go fuck themselves.
I was and am still so proud to have called her my mother and her love for other people remains an inspiration.
The European plug adapter is a mystery, though it’s likely she found it and probably figured that my wife and I could use it the next time we traveled across the Atlantic. While I’m sure most people would find the “mystery” medications floating around in the bag to be alarming, I know she knew exactly what each one was. The crayons, though, make perfect sense: my mother loved to color and she loved the scent of Crayola™ crayons. Specifically Crayola™—no Rose Art™ here.
The coffee candy, though, is generational. My grandfather, my mother’s father, loved his Cadillacs. The 80s Cadillacs had all kinds of ashtrays and compartments and my grandfather would fill them with small, hard, individually-wrapped coffee candies. Me and all my cousins knew what we would find in the “Caddy.” The scent and taste of hard coffee candies never fails to transport me to my childhood. I’d say I loved the taste of coffee before I’d even drank coffee but that would be a lie, because Papa would always let me take sips of his re-re-re-re-heated coffee when Mom or Gram weren’t looking. It’s the reason today that I take my coffee sweet enough to melt my teeth. I’m convinced my coffee is even better after that first pass through the microwave (after I brewed it, forgot about it, and let it get cold).
We have not yet turned on Mom’s laptop. That will be an adventure for another time. For now, I need to get back to unpacking her things.
Thank you for being here. You can find previous issues of Optimistic Hoarder in the archive. Documenting things like this is hopefully going to give me the motivation to continue going through my mother’s things. I do not promise any sort of consistency with this newsletter and it’s free so them’s the breaks. Also, these pieces are not heavily edited so if you catch something, no you didn’t.
Consider buying me a coffee. I’m gonna need it. And you can find my other work here.