unpacking.

things are, for the most part, out of the boxes and bins, and with the exception of a few things scattered here and there that have yet to find a place, my place has become more or less my place. and i look in the final bin of things that remain unpacked for lack of furniture, and there's a little turtle that makes me smile and takes me back. when i was a senior in high school, my best friend's mom bought us matching stuffed turtles that were the softest things we had ever seen, and i slept with mine, and my friend took it with her through her various moves. i named mine torpid, torpy for short, and he was the one thing that i couldn't bear to leave home when i left for what i thought was going to be six months in thailand, but turned out to be a bit longer. at the end of my time there, all the things that i had brought as gifts for my host family seemed insufficient to express how much i was going to miss this place, these people, as crazy as they were, as crazy as i was then through a tumultous time that really made me, allowed me to be this person right now. so i offered torpy as a gesture of my love. for all of what i had experienced, as hard as it was sometimes, as much as i cried sometimes, still, my love. for who i knew i had become. and my host family was a little appalled, knowing that this was the one thing that gave me so much comfort at the end of the day, the one thing that allowed me to fall asleep, and they asked how i was going to be able to fall asleep without it, and i said that i would find a way because in that moment, i was wondering how i would fall asleep anyplace but this place that i had grown to love so contentiously. after some back and forth, my host mom squeezed it to her belly, as if the harder she squeezed, the less she would feel like crying, and i knew the feeling well. i came home without torpy, without my old self, except i still was kind of, though my family had a hard time recognizing me at first. we still have those moments, i think. but word got around about torpy because certainly i was never the type of woman who was ashamed to say that she liked the comfort of sleeping with a stuffed animal, and i was hanging out with ryan, who was my only nephew then, and he was showing me something, and my mom was there, and he said, aunt laura, you don't have a turtle anymore, you can take one of mine because i have two. and my heart...my heart. my sweet sweet boy. he was six years old then. my mom started crying, and saying to me, i didn't tell him to do this...he still breaks my heart. this turtle doesn't have a name. but he has the best story. i think i like it better that way.