We recently had to empty our car’s trunk, glovebox, center console and side door pockets in a very very short period of time – about 10 minutes. We literally dumped everything into the very handy, very large quantity of grocery bags stored in the trunk (both paper and reusable). Later we sorted through these things, a treasure chest and time capsule of the past dozen years of our lives. Finally found those missing in-n-out gift cards (what were they doing in the trunk?). Found a Giants 2012 World Series license plate holder (now, finally, and never too late, put to good use!). We found a plethora of bye-gone tech (cords, adapters, cigarette lighter converters). And, of course, sundry bottles of water for the dog or for us should the emergency arise. There was even 2 brand new decks of playing cards (in case we were ever bored and just sitting in the car?). Huh.

Like a tree’s rings, the things we carry with us for years and years forward through life tell our story. Oddly, it wasn’t the car trunk that really struck me as poignant but rather this tool chest.

I think I bought this tool box back in the late 1980s or early 1990s at a time when I was a true Weekend Warrior. Saturday mornings were spent at home depot or the neighborhood hardware store, saturday afternoons and all day sundays were spent restoring a string of apartments and homes on the east coast.

I say this every now and then, and it is a deeply meaningful statement for me: I have lost so many things in life, but somehow I managed to hold on to this. “This” is a very small list of things — a brass table that sat by my mom’s living room chair, a cast iron frying pan that I believe was my grandmother’s (or I have created the myth that it is so), a photo of my parents from the 1970s. How is it that so many things are lost along our way and somethings, like this big hulking tool box, are still here to tell the story of all those years.

I have this toolbox “out” because it is making yet another journey, this time from the city to the country. Having moved into an apartment a few years back, it’s high time to downsize the small number of tools that would be useful in town, but still keep a healthy amount for all the honey-do chores of country living. My “project” is to swap this out for the small, totable toolbox (plastic!) that’s in the cupboard here, but first I must decide what tools go to town and what stay out here.

Here’s just a sampling of what came out of the big red toolbox! Yikes! Where on earth did all those screwdrivers come from? And how many times have I actually used more than 2 or 3 of those wrenches? I have a rather sizable collection of box cutters — but there are already more than I need in the junk drawers both in the city and in the country.

*sigh*. I trust you are not laughing. Tell me you have nothing that reminds you of this.

I can look at some of these tools and go back to the project for which they were acquired. Many of them have gone mute and do not speak to me — no doubt due to my complete lack of attention to them over the years.

And I never found out what that nasty smell was that was coming from the toolbox whenever I opened it up. I trust that with the good cleaning it just got and an extra dose of lysol, plus a day or two in the fresh country air, the source of the mystery odor will leave like a smelly old ghost, both gone and very soon forgotten.

I confess to being somewhat maudlin about this “downsizing.” I know I can’t simply restuff this stuff into the toolbox drawers, that I must pick and choose what’s necessary.

And then? What am I to do with a lifetime of tools that have been there for me in that very specific moment of need and then have stood dutifully by for literally decades, watching me age, watching me grow, learn and change, even watching me buy power tools. Poor things. I suppose I will need to put them in a bag and find a home for lost and aging toys. I mean tools.

And then, tomorrow, I have the newer, younger toolbox to confront — the one with only a decade (or so) under its (tool)belt.

I am, indeed, growing old.