Lost, stolen, broken, died, left behind

If you’ve read anything by Alexandra Fuller, you know she’s had an epic life. She was born in Britain in 1969, and her family moved to then-Rhodesia-now-Zimbabwe when she was a toddler. Her multiple memoirs recall a childhood of family moves through central and southern Africa.

I just came across this paragraph from Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness:

“Imagine,” Mum says, “those Le Creuset pots have survived all these years. Even now, visitors see them in my kitchen as they come down the stairs in the garden and they say, “Oh, your pots, how orange and picturesque! I must take a photograph!” What those visitors to the Tree of Forgetfulness each know is that they are not only photographing the Le Creuset pots but also the shadow of everything that has not made it this far. Each time Mum set sail or moved to another farm or gave up a country, she had to assess what would fit into a few boxes, what could squeeze into the back of a Land Rover, what could make it across the borders of an unpredictable African country. Considering that Mum has always moved with a full complement of animals and a sizable library, precious few other acquisitions have survived the shift from one place to the next. “Lost, stolen, broken, died, left behind,” she says.

The losses Fuller has experienced are of a far greater order than the things I’ve shed in my few years of moving about. Still, there’s something elemental in that idea of shedding possessions, a feeling that registers within me as primal. Beyond the concessions I’ve made in recent years to meet that 23-kilo weight limit, I can remember an instinct I had to cull even in the time before I was travelling. Ever since I left the home where I grew up, I’ve always felt a need to stay agile, to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

“Lost, stolen, broken, died, left behind.” What objects of mine haven’t survived those shifts from place to place?