Moving the bikes out of the garage was a start, but there is still more to do in order to create the space I need for a clear mind in the next season. This has taken a long time—years, actually—but I have to run with the organizing momentum of springtime when I have it, as it usually doesn’t last long. Maki had promised to help me move things around on Saturday, but I had no idea how much I would actually need him.

We decided to fill the van with anything we could get rid of and take it to the dump. I knew there were a few more boxes of Vernon’s on the higher shelves that hadn’t been looked at since we moved to the house over three years ago, and I knew there were some hazardous waste materials long-needing disposal. Just in dragging the first boxes out, I could see that I’d have to sift through layers of unknown contents.  It first I was looking at the leftover bike gear in the corner: a couple of forks and handlebars, some perfectly new-looking cycling shoes for the thrift store, the helmets.

The helmets were the hardest to decide over. I wouldn’t say they “sparked joy,” but there were a couple of bike helmets that could be useful in the future. And then there were the motor helmets. I’ve paused over these elegant orbs often, but haven’t been able to get rid of them either. There is something romantic about them: instead of making me angry, they remind me of Vernon’s European dreams.

The biggest and highest box was opened last. It took both of us to get it down to the workbench. This, it turned out, was a box full of other boxes, each filled with layers of shop tools, bike chains, nuts, and bolts. All these things in one place brought back memories to both of us as we began to dig through them: how he’d loved to drive Maki up to the auto or bike shop to replace a missing tool (there were about 15 tiny screwdrivers in the mix) and how he’d spent hours in the garage (or at our first place, in the kitchen) tinkering over something, fixing something. The joy was in the time doing it. I suppose. Typically, it’s the job of the creative to create problems to solve.

Maki found some discarded parts of the Vespa…all we’ve seen of it since, so this was a surprise. Now we were on the hunt for treasure, understanding our limitations:  we wouldn’t keep anything that wasn’t useful or memorable. Maki found a bag of thumb drives and small attachments. “I’ve been needing one of these for my amp!” he exclaimed. Then we uncovered another of Vernon’s font sketchbooks. That was the most special of treasures. I thought we’d found them all!

But the jackpot was hit in the very last corner, of course, once all the other boxes has been lifted. In a closed cardboard box deep within the big box  was a stash of old wooden tools that he’d collected over the years in England. He’d worked for a time as a craftsman/wood-worker/furniture restorer. My dad remembers helping him pack it up before we moved here, another time that we were having to box and throw out tinkering bits from the shed. He’s asked about these tools a few times and we just shrug: “I I have no idea where they are…or if we even still have them.”  So opening hat box brought back a different level of memories to us, going further back to England. I am grateful Maki was with me because it was too much to witness alone…and truthfully, we are the only ones that lived with him those years…that can remember and make sense of these things. It validates our shared past to remember together.

And then…when we got the car as full as we could, we went to the dump and let everything except a few special treasures go. I don’t know how many more rounds of this sort of thing we have left  (not many.) But it was time because it happened.