Lunchbox outlasts marriage

My mind is a jumbled mess this morning.  I don’t really have a clear idea in my head what to write about today so feel free to jump now or you can come along for the ride. 

 I've started to notice that little things have been getting to me lately.  Last night for instance, I had a panic attack; an overwhelming, distressed feeling. (You know what I mean?  The one you get when you’ve accidentally pressed send on a text to your boss which is actually intended for your partner?!!) My shortness of breath was all over a bottle of wine.  I knew I had one bottle of Dunstones left in my cupboard from the case I had brought back from South Africa.  Now this wine is very nice, don’t get me wrong but it’s not vintage or overly expensive.  In my moment of panic, I realised that I must have given the wine away instead of the Sainsbury’s special that I had intended to bestow.  Luckily, I thought I must have taken it to my sister’s for my niece’s 30^th party at the weekend.   Now if it had been anyone else, I would have left it but hey family is family so I called and asked her to check to see if it had been drunk yet.  Twenty minutes later, after scouring her wine rack and cupboards, not to mention trawling through her recycling bin like a street bum; the search came to no avail.  With renewed optimism, I did a thorough sweep of my pantry and lo and behold, it was there! I have no idea what I am saving it for but just knowing it’s there makes me feel better and at peace with the world. My good friend from SA, who I had purchased the wine from, and who had seen my relieved Facebook status,  informed me last night that the wine is now being imported into this country so that’s a reassuring back up plan.

Now if it had just been the wine bottle that I had assigned so much importance to that would be bad enough but there’s more!  I totally lost it with my 11 year old last week.  As we were returning from the evening’s cricket match, he suddenly slapped his head and said,”Oh no, I’ve forgotten it.”

 Seeing as I had already made three trips to the away cricket ground that evening, (DON’T ASK) there was no way I was returning to look for it.  Yes, once again he had lost something but wait for it; you’re thinking it was his cricket bat. Right? Wrong, it was a Tupperware sandwich box.  A regular, plastic tub with a yellow lid.  What my child did not realise was that the aforementioned receptacle had outlasted my marriage.  It had been with me through fourteen years of teaching, travelled to South Africa, been well used, made the return trip to the UK and remained unscathed through all its twenty years in my possession.  After a right roasting which lasted the duration of the drive home, my child tried to tell me that he thought it was the lunch box with the blue lid not the yellow one which he’d forgotten.  Could he be right?   Of course not, I’d got it in my head that he’d lost my yellow-lidded,lunchbox so it had to be that one. By the time we arrived home, I had just about come to terms with the loss of my lunchbox and was trying to console myself with the fact that Jeez Louise, it was just a piece of plastic.  However, imagine my delight when I found my lunchbox with the yellow lid, sitting on the kitchen draining rack.  Relief and jubilation!   My child was also relieved that my psychotic moment had passed and I wasn’t the least bit bothered that he’d lost the lunchbox with the blue lid.

Okay, I know I was overreacting.  I do realise that the wine bottle and lunch box are both just random items to which I have attributed far more importance than is warranted.  I don’t actually need the wine to remind me of all my happy memories and friends in South Africa and I don’t need a sad, faded piece of Tupperware to remind me that I have belongings which have  lasted longer than my marriage. Have any of you assigned undue significance to any random objects lately? I suppose it’s easily done when you feel you’ve lost things which you hold very dear to your heart. I shall continue to come to terms with the fact that I need to just, let go. Sometimes I feel like I’m letting go of so much that I wonder what I’m going to be left with; hence, my slightly dysfunctional attachment to random, inanimate objects.  However, in light of this, I have made a promise to myself.  The Dunstones wine is being put in a ‘safe place’ and there’s no way my plastic lunch box with the yellow lid is leaving this house again unless it’s accompanied and firmly attached to the wrist of an armed guard!