Optimistic Hoarder: Box 005
Box: 005
Provenance: Lahaina, HI
Description: Purple carry-on luggage (quite heavy)
Contents:
Disposable shaving razor
Khaki shorts with a torn hem (linen)
Puka shell necklace (in a paper bag)
Two 32GB flash drives (new in packages)
Name badge from one of her jobs
Maui County retail worker card
Maui brochures
Los Medanos College student ID card
USB converter in an empty orange prescription bottle (no label)
Printout of rate table for the whale watch/dinner cruise company she worked for
Notebook
Dimmable, anti-glare magnifying glass
Large red Maglite™ and a few others in various sizes
Fujifilm Finepix XP120™ waterproof camera
Umbrella
Casio™ watch, analog (still ticking and on Hawaii time)
Single G.U.M. Proxabrush™
Holiday card from nephew
Loofah face mitt (new in package)
Thank you card from former roommate
In-ear headphones with charging cord
Neoprene zip pouch with a card of “Roo Facts,” a list of facts about big red kangaroos
Crayola™ tin (with handle) containing:
Two 24-packs of crayons (new)
2-pack of CR2025 batteries
A glass dropper
Altoid™ tin containing an 8GB flash drive
Camera filters for lenses
Accordion file and reusable bag of paperwork
Orange prescription bottle (no label) containing:
16GB flash drive
Two hair ties
Two pairs of dangly earrings
External hard drive
Packing tape
Canon G10™
Compact Flash Card labeled “July 2012”
Unopened bag of Ricola™ lozenges, Berry Medley flavor
Various flash drives, some new in packages
Panasonic Lumix™
3 MicroSD cards, new in package
Two cross pendants
MicroSD card taped to a Contra Costa County medical card
External battery
Aveeno™ lotion, barely closed
More Casio™ watches
Snail mail from my wife and I when we were in China and a Hong Kong Disneyland pin, still with packaging
Tire gauge
Two quarters
Single camera bag holding a Phillips™ electric toothbrush charger
Plumeria incense holder
Morro Bay bottle opener
Binoculars
Ruminations:
Hello everyone! I took a break from going through my mother’s things as my wife and I went on a trip and then had a couple very busy months. We’ve gone through more of my mother’s boxes and I scribbled down notes; now I’m back to actually getting my thoughts down in this newsletter.
This is the carry-on luggage my mother had with her on the plane when she moved back to the Bay Area from Lahaina in November 2022.
One of my mother’s jobs while living in Lahaina was for a cruise company that did dinner cruises, snorkel outings, and whale watching (when it was whale watching season, of course). If I haven’t mentioned it already, my mother was incredible at connecting with people. She could make friends with most anyone and every week I’d hear from her that she met a family or a couple that checked in for snorkeling or whale watching and they invited her to stay with them in Australia, Italy, Boston, North Carolina, Seattle, you name it. They’d come back to the dock to see her. They’d invite her out to dinner with them while they were still vacationing on Maui. They’d give her little gifts, hefty tips, and sincere hugs. They’d find each other on Facebook and keep in contact.
How does this relate to what is in Box 005? Well, many of the cameras, watches, flash drives, and memory cards in this luggage look like items that were left on the boat during one of these cruises. I’m sure my mother held them at the booth for at least a month before taking them with the plans to look at the memory cards and identify the owners; however, follow-through was not her strength so now I have this camera graveyard. I’m sure the internet can help me identify the owners but it is not currently a priority.
The large amount of new flash drives does not surprise me. Like most hoarders, my mother constantly worried about space and this extended to her digital storage space. As I probably mentioned before, she was also a photographer and so running out of storage for photos was a real concern.
The things in this luggage that really gave me an emotional reaction are the two quarters: two incredibly shiny quarters. If one weren’t oddly goldish, I’d say they were brand new and they were tucked into a pocket of their own. After a moment’s inspection, I burst into tears not from grief, but because I realized why my mother had these two exact quarters with her and it was a favorite story I had forgotten until that moment.
In 2005, I was on a plane with my mother and her best friend on our way to Italy to see a couple of my best friends, one of whom was studying in Padova. Mid-flight above the Atlantic when folks were free to roam about the cabin, a woman walked up to my mother and asked, “Are you Mankiller?” Without missing a beat, my mother folded her arms and in a serious tone replied, “I don’t know. Do I need to be?” It was then she learned that the person had mistaken her for Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. We did not know this last bit of detail until after we had returned from our trip so for our fifteen days around northern Italy, my mother would not infrequently remind us to be careful because she’s “a man killer.”
The two quarters I had pulled from her trusty backpack have Wilma Mankiller on the reverse side. In this same bag was a light-up magnifying glass still in the box. A quick web search on the quarters unlocked another piece to the puzzle that was my mother: some of the Wilma Mankiller quarters have errors and can be worth much more than twenty-five cents.
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.