The Treasure Hunt
My dad was not an architect, but he could have been. He inherited the gene from his paternal line of architects, draftsman, and general tinkerers. He designed some housing downtown and always dreamed of building his own home. But that dream ultimately eluded him. My dad had the tidy block lettering of an architect— the kind of handwriting I would like to craft into a font.
His life partner recently told me I could come to his former garage and retrieve his boxes of belongings and a few furniture items. She told me I would have one day (later she allowed me two). It wasn’t easy to organize as my brain lately reminds me of a gusty fall day: different colored leaves swirling, landing, picking up again and landing elsewhere.
I rented a storage space and vetted movers and some generous dear friends said they would show up as did family. In the end, it felt simple, like gathering the leaves, arranging them into piles and bags, and stacking them neatly away from the wind. My mind was settled in a new way for the first time in the 6 months since my dad died. The wind storm had a spring stillness. My dad was very organized. My storage unit is two tight rows of his boxes with his neat architect’s block lettering that is like a little brand on my brain- when I see it, I know it.
Now in a room in my house I write this at my dad’s desk. The drawers still have some of his things (secrets). Across from me is my great grandparents’ bookcase. I’m turning it into a museum of family relics. Most prominent are the strips of little photobooth photos taken over the years: myself, my daughters, cousins peppered in. Just one strip cut out is a black and white of myself in short shiny braids, my brother's glowing bowl cut at maybe 6 years old, and my dad in his giant mustache of the era. It is probably 1979. We look contagiously happy.
The night after a day of moving my dad’s boxes and furniture, I went downtown with a friend for a glass of wine and a gallery opening. Full on marcona almonds, we walked 9 blocks to the gallery. The night was beautiful Tucson spring cool, and we passed pictures of ourselves, our siblings and children on the downtown tunnel walls filled with tile portraits of Tucsonans. My own young face and my daughters’ faces struck me with such a pang of time— like a sharp stab of joy in my heart. Because we aren’t young like we were young then. The delicious passing of time is like sucking a milkshake through a straw that is always too tiny.
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