an ode to a battered suitcase

I am back from a fabulous vacation, where I did lots of thinking about the blog and if I will keep it. In the meantime, I do have something I want to say---to my suitcase (embarrassingly enough, I don't even know if my own suitcase reads my blog :))!

You are battered and torn, scuffed around the edges with two broken zippers and a handle that no longer behaves as it should. So many countless things that I have traded in, traded up, discarded and long forgotten—yet you remain. I purchased you for an adventure all my own, but in a brazen move, I selected you to match the luggage of a man I was just beginning to know. In the beginning it was just us—me and my too small suitcase. In you I carried a summer’s worth of clothing which later became so filthy it was simply left behind. I marveled with how I had traveled so light. On the way home, I filled you with a rug, pillow cases, and a woolen baby coat (brimming with plans for the future and the man with the matching luggage). We went vacationing and to seemingly innumerable weddings in those early years. Together we went on my honeymoon and, one by one, the funerals of my grandparents. You were the perfect bag for my first real business trip and when we needed a get-away after a painful loss. Eventually you held maternity clothes, onesies and tiny socks. The wearers of the onsies grew so big they needed their own bags, and I got you back to myself. We have visited friends, criss-crossing the country and filling two passports. You have sat in my closet in an apartment and three houses. Even as our travels have become decidedly more glamorous, you are my constant. It is commonplace for fellow travelers to note your Lilliputian stature. I take that as a compliment, knowing that though I may be a woman who travels to stylish locales, I am still the girl who could set out on an adventure all her own with so few things and such big dreams.