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(HYBRID ESSAY)

WHAT WE CARRY

​ELIZABETH TEMPLEMAN

​
What we carry, like jugs of water in a desert, sustains us, even as it pulls us down.
 
How well do I know the things I carry, things I shed? Can I draw them out, extricate each one from the tangle, examine its shape, say its name?
 
I carry memories, but with no control or much idea of which are getting carried, which dent or warp in the carrying, which spill out from whatever vessel memory forms. I carry belief and bias, like barnacles, with precious little notion of when most have attached to me.
 
I carry a confounding accumulation of possessions, and a baffling fondness for them. Some seem more to have chosen me, but a few I’m conscious of having selected. The inclination to purge, or to cull, arises seasonally. And I carry that too.
 
I carry ties to friends, family, husband, the ties woven from affection, loyalty, and longing. Now and then, enemies get drawn up in the load. And for a time, I carry them too.
 
I carry, in some way or another—always morphing—my children in cumbersome, shapeless bundles. Aloft, they bring me joy, strength, anxiety, love. Striving to sustain connection, without clinging, I carry, also, a responsibility for this impossible agility, this perpetual balancing.
 
I carry fears, powerful beyond reason, of wasting things—food, whether radish or roast, paper, water, garden soil, minutes, hours, dollars, dimes. I can't quit running cold water into a jug, until hot water comes—to pour into the back of the toilet, saving two litres of flushed water; at first, bright idea—now more an obsession. I do not, it seems, carry perspective.
 
I carry this love of the written word. But no memory of the time when I didn’t hold it close. Maybe I carry a love of spoken (or unspoken) words too. Words fill my head, in the way I imagine colours swirl in the mind of the painter. And, of course, I try to carry the words themselves, sometimes succeeding, though other loads push words off their perch, more and more.
 
I carry snatches of songs, diminishing chunks of poems. But as many have dropped away. When I go searching, whole pages of Jelly Belly, Dr. Seuss. Robert Frost? Gone. Robert Munsch? Intact.
 
I carry my personality (or lack of it, in my mother’s estimation), my full-blown introversion (able to knock an A+ on any test for the trait), my intuiting, endlessly analyzing, judging self, my optimistic, daydreaming ways.
 
I carry my genes, those ambiguous and tiny coded clusters of chemicals linking me with family back and forward in time. Imagined with cartoon-like clarity, they’re likely at the controls of the whole load-bearing endeavor. For thoroughness sake, I can't dodge one final, perverse admission: I carry the body which carries me.
 
No wonder, then, it can all get so ponderous: my body, in its most literal rendering, is, well… muscled, flabby, aging. Buttressed by an ill-formed spine, piloted by mis-angled eyes, fueled by will and energy, it does push on. But my thoroughness also leaves me wondering: What would it be like, just once, to dump it all on the ground in a heap, and shake myself into a more ergonomic receptacle?
 
I picture lining myself with cubbies and pockets. What a sweet relief to sort and repack all of it: To balance things and position the most precious safely, between heart and mind. To cast off husks whose significance has faded.
​

Elizabeth Templeman lives and works in the Central Interior of British Columbia. A collection of her essays, Notes from the Interior, was published in 2003 by Oolichan Books; individual essays have appeared in The Globe & Mail (“Facts & Arguments”), and journals including Room Magazine and Southern Humanities Review.
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