Drawers

Back where my mama's family comes from, the word "drawers" can mean those slide-out boxes in a dresser or chest where you keep your clothes or maybe random junk, OR it can mean your underpants.  I think northerners exchange "bloomers" for drawers, but I digress.

This post is not about underpants.

The Mister will tell you that my drawers are terrifying.  (please refer once more to the above disclaimer re: drawers not being underpants.)  They are terrifying because I collect junk in every single drawer that will open wide enough for me to slide something else into it. 

The kitchen drawer:
Random mixed candles
A small hammer
Nine assorted playing cards from two different decks
Scotch, duct, painter's, masking and electrical tape
Rusty scissors that wouldn't cut warm butter
Warranty for the toaster
Four pens with no ink left

The rolltop desk:
Old checkbooks from closed accounts
Ornaments marked down December 28th last year that I forgot about until Easter
Eight copies of each child's school portrait for the past five years (need to send those out one of these days...)
My late grandmother's business cards
More tape
Teeth (yes, I keep my children's baby teeth. So what.)

My bathroom drawers:
Haircare products
Skincare products
Failed lipsticks
Ugly hairbands
Seven tubes of my favorite toothpaste (it was on SALE, for pete's sake)

Dresser drawers:
T-shirts
Jeans
Drawers (yes, underpants)
Gloves
Socks
Old zoom lens for a Pentax camera I sold in '93


My brain has hundreds of different drawers as well, with labels to identify their contents.  The majority of them overflow with memories of one kind or another;  some joyful, some horrific, some just random snapshots of insignificance like my third grade desk or a long-gone favorite hairbrush.

Other drawers contain opinions, assessments, learned lessons, failed lessons, habits, desires, tastes, distastes, conclusions and questions unasked and/or unanswered.  There's an entire section devoted to faith, and I like adding to it most of all.  I already have more than I ever imagined I would.

But.

Every now and then, someone or something happens and I don't know where to put it.  It doesn't line up with any of my hundreds of existing drawer labels - so I don't know what to do with it.  So I just stand there inside my head, hopping from foot to foot like a kindergartner with a full bladder....wondering what to do with this thing that must be put somewhere, for crying out loud, just put it SOMEWHERE because it hurts and it smells bad.

So it is with Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14th, 2012.  I do have a drawer labeled "To Think About Later", and I've tried to shove it in there a number of times, but it won't stay.  "Evil" seemed appropriate at first, but then "Heroes", "Community" and "Stupid Cable News Shows" confused the issue further.

All the while, the Faith section has been sitting undisturbed against the back wall, in the warm part where all the good stuff is.  It occurs to me to put Sandy Hook in Faith's top drawer...but what if that's not where it belongs??  What if it leaks on all my other faith things and then they all get ruined?

Oh my goodness. 

Faith. 

That is where this needs to go, because it's the only place it can possibly fit.