It started with pages cut from American Girl and photos from my $100 digital camera, the first “big girl purchase” I’d ever made. I taped them (and retaped them) in different configurations on my closet door, creating a collage of ephemerae I began to collect from various corners of my ten-year-old life. Old photos, new ones, cutouts from magazines… This organized tangle of pictures and drawings and tapeable things filled my closet door, and when I moved to North Carolina, I did the same. Book lists from Battle of the Books, notes from friends, and movie tickets joined my original collection.
I brought my technique to college, saving all the theater tickets and taking flyers for long-past events that I liked the look of and taping them all over the armoire we had in lieu of a closet. A few of the old photos followed me from place to place, joining what eventually became four years of tickets from student plays, door signs made by my cross country teammates, and reminders of home or other sacred places, like the parking pass for the Sea Vista Motel I saved after a life-giving trip to Topsail Island with my mom before I had surgery one summer. This collection grew and shrank year by year. When I studied abroad for a semester, I took only a few photos of my family and my sister’s tree, but ended up arranging the New Yorker-esque cover pages of Victoria University’s student magazine and the various touristy maps I collected all over my door (along with plane tickets, two tickets to Hobbiton, and a cable car ticket… I like tickets).
The tradition paused for my first two homes in Cambridge/Somerville. I wasn’t there for a long time (though I thought I’d be in both for longer), and they honestly didn’t feel like home for me. When I moved back up to Cambridge in August 2021, I tentatively arranged a more reserved collection of photos and postcards on one of the walls in my tiny room. They were perfectly hidden by my door when I opened it, and when I curled up in bed, they were right in my line of sight. I saw my parents’ and siblings’ handwriting just as I was waking up every morning and right before I fell asleep each night. But they became kind of private. Like I was ashamed of my little hoard of paper treasures. I didn’t want my roommates to make fun of this childish collection of race bibs and notes from friends and family and motel parking passes. And, looking back, I think that says a lot about how I felt about myself when I first moved back to Boston. I was embarrassed by how much I treasured these pieces of paper and fragments of my past, that my sentimentality would be seen as a kind of weakness. Perhaps I still didn’t totally feel like I was home. The majority of the photos, postcards, and signs remained in a beautiful leather envelope.
Cut to about a year and a half later. I’ve got my own room in a two-bedroom apartment I’ve just begun renting with my boyfriend, Tom, and there’s a large empty wall behind me during all of my zoom calls. Over the course of a few days, I dumped the envelope onto my bed and started playing with all the ephemerae again, trying to arrange it into something that would fill at least part of my boring background. What emerged was my biggest, most complicated arrangement yet. I included framed art for the first time, nestling them amongst a bed of postcards, photos, and race bibs. One of my colleagues asked me about it in a one-on-one meeting, and when I explained that it was a collection of notes and things I’d amassed over the years, he described it as a wonderful little archive. That knocked me out a little. Of course my librarian-archaeologist soul would be archiving the materials of my life. And as I talked about it, as I pointed out the things people had sent and made for me over the years, this warmth collected in my chest. Here was the most visible reminder of all these joys I’ve collected in my lifetime, peeking over my shoulder. A physical representation of the love and support I’ve received over the years. Photographic and artistic evidence that I had explored the world and done all of these things.
When I arrived at Kenyon’s campus in August 2015, my CA had taped a quote from A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh onto my and my roommate’s door. It had a small illustration of Pooh and Piglet sitting on a log and the quote, “You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” I’ve brought it everywhere I’ve lived since then.
There are many reasons I love this quote. I don’t know why Quinn decided to post it on our door, but we were the very last room in the hall, definitely in our own little corner of the woods. Perhaps she knew we were introverted and would need a nudge to find our communities, that we’d need to seek out the relationships we’d have for the rest of our lives. She was right (though I’m also still incredibly close with the roommate I shared that little corner of the woods with). As much as I’d loved living in my own world, I knew that I needed to leave the safety of my nest. It was one reason I’d moved halfway across the country for college. And I knew that I couldn’t just wait for things to happen anymore. I wanted to seek and make my life, not react to whatever was thrown my way. This printout was a physical reminder from the universe that I was on the right path.
I have always imagined it was Piglet telling Pooh this advice. In the image, Pooh looked like he was listening, and Piglet like he was talking. Plus, my parents assigned each of us kids a character from the stories, and I had always been Pooh, and Haley was Piglet. It felt like Haley reaching out to me, telling me (like any big sister) to put yourself out there! I think Pooh might have actually been the one talking, but I prefer my interpretation. Though the reality is just as true. Over the last eight years, I’ve taped this reminder to my wall or door to remind myself to keep reaching out, keep exploring new corners of the forest. Others have come to me in time, but I’ve needed to go to them, too.
In the next two weeks, I’ll need to gently tug all of my ephemerae off the wall and put them back in their beautiful leather envelope. I may cull some old pieces, make way for others. When I settle into my next home, I’ll find an empty wall (or door) and start the exhibit over again. One day, I might put them into a scrapbook or something. Preservation and all that. But I may pay real dollars to frame a few of them. These reminders in my corner of the woods that I am never alone, full of lovely memories, and excited for the next adventure.
Fluffernutter Friday 