Close(t) to my heart

Finished riding the first of three waves of a high-adrenaline period at work, so it's a really sweet Saturday morning. A rare one where I actually sat at the breakfast table and read the papers till 10am! Was scrutinizing the furniture ads and handphone deals... yups, looks like we'll have plenty of shedding of old and heralding of new in the next few months :-)

Btw, had a great time playing card/board games at a friend's place yesterday evening. Am now inspired to have a games space in our new place! I can see it in my mind's eye - a floor to ceiling portion of one cupboard neatly stacked with games in alpha order/by category, and gameplay along the long dining table or living area. Hmm...

Anyway. I digress. Part of shedding of old and heralding of new includes the tricky and emotional task of opening one's closets and deciding what needs to go. It's really hard, when the closets contain more than the usual clothes and accessories. In my case, the closets also contain different forms of music; little trinkets from friends and loved ones over the years; and stuffed furry friends big and small - many representing significant points in my little life journey.

Like this FF bear, which a Chinese teacher (also our choir mother) gave me the day I was collecting my A-level results. I was relief teaching back in my JC before going to university. I shared a table with another girl who was relief teaching the same subject, and we had tons of fun. Heh, I remember doing Econs tutorials in the lab with the kids when we'd finished the Physics experiments we were supposed to do...

Or like this friendly lil porcupine. A very dear friend (gosh, we've been friends for 18 years!) had sewn on the cheery sunflower, and given it to me just before I went to Vancouver on student exchange for a semester - just so I wouldn't be lonely. It was very memorable, and I learnt many things during that period...
 















Had a good laugh when I uncovered a pink, heart-shaped Van Houten chocolates box full of threads of a zillion colours! Remnants from the days when we would spend weeks during school hols doing up Precious Moments cross stitch pictures as birthday gifts; or spend hours in secondary school knotting up friendship bands which we would later display proudly on our bags, pencil cases, wrists as signs of loyalty to each other. Hey, in those days, such threads didn't come cheap - I had to save up in order to get enough to do a small cross stitch project! ... Somewhere in all that yarn, I actually found a few incomplete bands, and spent some time this week finishing them up (who they were meant for, I guess I'll never know...)

And this hand-made card hanging by the side of my cupboard - a gift tag that came with presents we received as the outgoing senior committee of our secondary school choir. We used to rehearse in the AV/Language lab at the top storey of the school, and the lab had a long, wide formidable looking table across its width at the front of the room. When the photocopied music came in late, some of us would hide on the floor behind the table, furiously stapling music together - whilst our conductor was working with the choir on the other side!

This red coin purse would be very unremarkable placed alongside many other fancy, eyecatching alternatives we have these days - except that it was one of the first few things I owned in primary school. This purse would contain the 50 cents that I'd bring to school daily, enough to get a bowl of macaroni soup at recess time (served in a lime green bowl with a lime green spoon, I can still remember). As I grew up, I got more pocket money, and went on to buy nicely fried chicken wings after P.E., or an eraser or two (yes, the ones with the country flags).

Right at the top of my closets, I have more recent memories - tightly sealed boxes of winter clothes, testament to a well-spent and much-missed time in Ottawa last year. What a contrast the frost there is to the sweltering weather we have here! I recall sharing with people there (friends as well as strangers - Canadians are generally very warm and friendly) the average temperatures in Singapore, and they would exclaim incredulously, "What on earth are you doing here? You should be getting outta here quickly!"

And so many more.

What a surprise and comfort to open my closets and find, beyond the clothes and accessories I use to dress myself, evidence of the love and grace that clothe my life, and blessings and relationships that mark and adorn the journeys I have taken.

What would you find in your closets? :-)