The egg chronicles

Some of you may know that my expired egg quirkiness recently landed me a coveted spot as a finalist in Lynn's super spectacular quirky acts contest. In case you are too lazy to point and click at any of those spiffy links I just gave you (come on, go and give Lynn some love!), this was my submission:

“I gave CheckMate a carton of expired eggs as a gift about a month ago. Yesterday, I asked him if I could babysit them for the next two weeks while he’s on vacation.”

Now, some of you may be wondering why the hell I would think expired eggs were an acceptable gift at the very beginning of a relationship, if ever. That is why I give you Savia and CheckMate's relationship thus far, as told through expired eggs:

I

Before we officially started dating, we had these long, animated phone conversations where we would talk about everything under the sun. We got on the topic of eating dubious things out of the fridge, something we are both guilty of. For some reason, I started talking about eggs:

Savia: The best thing about eggs is that they don't really go bad. They have an expiry date on them, but that doesn't really mean anything. You just crack them, and if they don't smell bad, you're good.
CheckMate: Uh, Savia... there's this thing, called botulism... and you can't smell it.
Savia: [feeling like an idiot] Oh.

II

The day after our first official date, when we kissed for the first time.

The phone rings.

Savia: Hello?
CheckMate: I was taking an expired egg out of the fridge, and I thought of you.

I decided to take that as a compliment.

III

Two days later, I knew he was at rehearsal, and I left this message on his machine:

Savia: The expired eggs in my fridge are mocking me. I have a full carton that have never been touched, but now that you've told me about this botulism thing, I can't eat them. But I can't throw them away either, because that would be wasting food and my mom taught me not to do that. So, they're just sitting there, mocking me. And it's all your fault!

IV

CheckMate sends out a party invitation that reads:

Bring your favourite beverage! Your favourite tunes! Your favourite musical instrument! Your favourite person! Your favourite flightless bird!

Little did he know that I take party invitations very literally. I found each of those things he requested (FYI, I wore my saucy nickname shirt to show that I was my own favourite person) and for the flightless bird, I handed him the carton of expired eggs that had been mocking me for the past few weeks. He laughed his ass off and put them in his fridge.

V

A few weeks later, I made some comment about the expired eggs. He was strangely silent.

Savia: What?
CheckMate: I threw the eggs away.
Savia: [overdramatically, and with much feigned distress] How could you! Those eggs symbolized our entire relationship, and now they're gone... gone... [fake sob]

I must admit I was a bit disappointed that he had thrown the eggs away. In my twisted imagination, I had invented a narrative around the eggs, how they would become our "thing", a little internal joke between the two of us. We would find ways to pass them back and forth, sneaking them into each other's fridges, one-upping each other with our cleverness. And then, I thought, "Well, of course he threw them out - you gave him fucking expired eggs. Who does that?? Maybe he's the kind of guy who, I don't know, actually cleans his fridge once in awhile! That's probably a good thing, you freak!"

And so, I let the dream of the expired eggs die. Until...

VI

A phone call about a week later:

CheckMate: The eggs are back in my fridge.
Savia: What? But you threw them out. How is that possible?
CheckMate: Well, I thought I had thrown them out. But sometimes, I leave my garbage by the door for awhile before taking it out. When I went today, I saw that they were sitting there. They've been there for five days. I was kind of happy to see them. I felt bad throwing them away because they were a gift from you. I mean, they were a weird gift, but they were still a gift, you know?
Savia: Oh my god, I am so happy!

VII

And that brings us up to my submission to Lynn's contest. CheckMate is on vacation right now, and before he left, I asked him to give me the eggs to take care of while he's away. And he gave them, without a single question, because I guess he's used to my strange requests by now. But what he didn't realize is that this particular request had a hidden motive.

I was feeling festive. So I wrote some of our favourite words on the eggs in crayon and dyed them.

Aren't they pretty?

Botulism: the word that started it all.

Both CheckMate and Saviabella got their own eggs.

I never thought I'd be writing "fucktard" on an egg with crayon.

If you look at the photo of the entire carton, you'll notice that one of the eggs looks a little different from the rest (one of these things is not like the other...). This is because one of the eggs was cracked and couldn't be salvaged. So, I put a hollow plastic egg in its place. Inside, I put three pieces of paper: a passage from Middlemarch by George Eliot (we fell for each other over discussions of this book), a quote from the play he was recently in, and my favourite Katherine Mansfield quote, which has become my personal mantra:

He comes back on Saturday. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and yes, I am aware that this egg fetish can be read as some sort of fertility symbolism, and I'm sure Freud would have a lot to say about it, but I'm quite happy living in denial, so please be kind and not mention it.

Kindred spirits

This made my heart hurt.

Letting go

It's amazing the power stuff has over us. We feel such an attachment to things, and in many ways, they weigh us down, tie us down, emotionally and physically. I have a lot of respect for people who can walk away from the world of material things and exist on a different plane, but I will never be one of those people. In fact, I am so anal retentive about my things that if someone borrows something of mine, I make a little notation outlining what has been lent and to whom, and then I secretly obsess about its absence until the person finally returns it. Then, and only then, am I at peace.

I have been trying to pare down my collection of stuff over the past few years, because I hate owning anything that I don't use on a regular basis. It feels like clutter, like waste, two things that I detest. The process of purging is an interesting one, because you realize the psychological hold that mere things can have on you. A shirt, a sweater, a pair of pants that never really did fit. Why is it so hard to let them go? Because they are a part of you. They are pieces of who we used to be or who we wish we were. They hold memories. They hold dreams. They hold fears. And pain.

When I was 22, I dated the Prof, someone 13 years older than me, divorced, and full of pain. We were both consumed by pain that we were unable to release, pain that kept us from moving forward in our lives. His was from his divorce, and mine from the abuse I'd endured as a young child. I naively believed it could work, this intense, needy, tumultuous relationship built on pain.

I remember the day when I realized that we were not going to be together forever. We had gone upstairs to his bedroom and I became conscious of something on his dresser that I must have walked by dozens of times and never noticed. It was an orange glass container with a lid - a vintage 1970s style bowl that perhaps used to be a candy dish. On top of the lid was an engraved animal ID tag - one that would have graced the collar of a beloved pet.

When I saw it, a chill went through my entire body and I involuntarily took a step back. I knew what it was, but I asked anyway.

Savia: What is in that bowl?
The Prof: My cat's ashes.

My chest felt tight as I sank onto his bed. "That is so sad," I said. I knew, before he opened his mouth, why he was holding on to a cat that had been dead for more than two years.

He began to talk about the final years of his marriage and how horrible and painful they were, and how the cat was the only positive memory he had of that time. The cat died right before his wife left him. He was utterly devastated and alone. He thought about moving away and kept the ashes so he could lay the cat to rest wherever he ended up. But he never did move away, and so the ashes remained in the makeshift urn on his dresser, a reminder of the "good times" they shared together during one of the hardest times in his life.

It was so clear to me that he wasn't holding on to the good times, or the memory of the cat itself; he was holding on to the pain, and it was wrapped in orange glass along with those ashes. He wasn't ready to move on, or be with me because he was still living in the past. There were so many things I wanted to say to make him realize what he was doing. But instead, I said, "Your cat really loved to play in your backyard, didn't he? Cats are so attached to places. Maybe that's where he would like to be." He didn't really say anything, and I dropped the subject. A few weeks later, we broke up.

We talked several months afterward and he told me that he couldn't stop thinking about what I had said. One day, he opened the orange glass urn, took out the bag of ashes, and let the wind scatter them across his garden. He was finally able to release the pain and let it go. He thanked me for doing that for him.

It was one of those relationships that needed to happen, for both of us to grow and move on. I, too, was able to release my pain from the past through our relationship, but it created a whole new world of pain that left me broken for two years after it ended. One step forward, two steps back. It needed to happen, though, and I'm a better person for having known him. I don't know if he knows that, but it's true.

Every few months, I go through my stuff and evaluate what I really need to keep, and what I can take to the Outreach Centre. Anytime I hesitate on something that I know I haven't used for months or even years, and I can feel that internal struggle, I say to myself, "Let the past go." That gives me the strength to shove it into a bag and send it away, because I know it's so much more than a snagged sweater or a streched out bra.

Oh, the snark!

I got a lovely voice message from my snarky friend who likes to harass me about still being in high school because I give reasons such as homework and braces as excuses for not going out on the town with him. Here's what he had to say, in his best apathetic teen voice:

Mr. Snark: So, today in gym class, Mr. Bumount was all, you have to run laps ‘cause he didn’t have anything prepared, so all we did was run laps all day. Then, I went to English class and I was sitting in front of Desiree, and she was just talking to Lisa all day and it was ridiculous and stupid and Mr. Turnett wasn’t even there because he’s sick or something and so they had this sub in and she didn’t know anything and she didn’t know what we were doing so we had to, like, read the whole class and it was so stupid. I was just phoning because I got the car from my mom tonight and so I was just wondering if you wanted to go out because I don’t know when I’ll get the car again because my mom’s being all stupid. So I guess you’re not home because you’ve got class or something, so I’ll talk to you later.

Subtlety is not his strong suit.