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My car is always messy. It’s always got a tissue here, something I bought and meant to bring into my house later but just haven't got around to yet, at least one jumper, and a lip balm rolling around on the floor.
There are lots of things in my car. And at the moment it really needs a clean out.
But when I do, there are things I will be leaving in it.
One of these things is a laminated copy of a music festival line up.
The music festival was years ago. It was a two day festival. On the first day I arrived with three of my friends. Throughout the day we ran into friends of theirs, friends of mine, friends of ours. We drank, we danced, we got sunburnt. One of the friends we ran into squealed with joy, and I can still remember how she dropped the canvas bag on her shoulder to the ground, searching through it while I stood in front of her, before shoving something into my hands, and then each of my friends.
It was the laminated copy of the festival line up.
She’d printed them out at work, printed so they were no bigger than an a5 size, but still readable. It had the festival line up for each day. No two were the same. You could tell they’d been cut out of a sheet, then laminated in a bigger piece, before being cut down to size, and it fit perfectly in my back pocket. Over the weekend I used that cut out more times than I could tell you. It got sweaty in my back pocket, and some of the laminate pulled away from itself. But it held together.
At the end of the two days I had the longest shower, and laid on the couch for a whole day. I didn’t want to move.
It was amazing.
There are things I hold onto well past their use. The Turkish Delight someone left taped to my car door with ‘here is a random act of kindness for you stranger’ the Chomp bar my friend left behind for me in my house when I was going through my break up. The lollipop the nurse gave me when I got my vaccination, laughing as she handed it over.
They’re things that I hang onto, not because I want them still, but because they do still bring me joy. I never ate that chocolate, or the one my friend gave me, and maybe that was a waste, but to me it wasn’t. Every time I saw them when I opened up my bag to see the random Turkish Delight, or my fridge to see where my friend had left the Chomp for me, I was reminded of the happiness I felt when I found them, reminded that someone left them behind with nothing more than a thought to make me happy.
The chocolates are gone now, and the lollipop has been thrown out today.
Their moments don’t last forever to me, but they do last on. I still think of them. Eventually that laminated festival lineup will be thrown out too.
But until then, I find happiness in it every time I see it.
And I’ll keep hanging onto it until it’s time passes.
