There’s this simple game I enjoy called Unpacking. In it, I follow a girl’s journey from her childhood bedroom to various apartments and houses as she grows up.
My favourite part was seeing which childhood items she kept as she moved. It’s good to bring some of our past with us while starting fresh in a place with space for new memories. It made me think about the items I chose to keep throughout the years.
I was born and raised in the Philippines. When I was six, my family moved to Cavite from Manila. In 2008, we moved from the Philippines to Canada. For the next decade, my family stayed in the same city in British Columbia. I moved all around the Lower Mainland. Finally, in 2019, my now-fiancé and I transferred to Calgary.
In Unpacking, the character you play takes several stuffed animals with her to each new home. Sometimes she only has room for a few, but when she finds a place with more space, the whole gang goes with her. Only in my adulthood is this possible. When I was growing up, my parents taught me to donate toys I outgrew. Younger cousins and charities inherited my well-loved items. Now, Joey and I can keep as many treasures as we want. We have quite a collection going. Each item was a gift or something we won from the fair. Or an impulse purchase from a new place we visited.
The objects we bring with us tell stories, so we decide what stories we’d like to remember over and over again. My little brother gave me this beanbag stuffy that I’ve named Shaunbear. It’s a koala with a goofy grin like his. He knows that some friends nicknamed me “Koala” and that I loved stuffed toys. Now that he’s gone, looking at Shaunbear is a bittersweet reminder that I had a little brother and that he loved me.
Categories
Posted on Life
Originally published at https://kyladelrosario.com on February 7, 2022.
