You Call It Snooping. I Call It Exploring.
I loved snooping when I was a kid.
Although at the time I saw it as “exploring”.
It’s why I loved going to my Nana’s house in the summer. (Although the main part was playing with my cousins).
My grandma had all kinds of solid wood dressers, closets stuffed with dresses, shoe boxes, and outdated magazines.
I was an archaeologist uncovering her next big discovery. Would the shoe box be filled with shoes or something shiny with a story?
Every drawer was a treasure chest.
My ideal wooden dresser for snooping, I mean exploring.
Nothing was organized the way my Virgo brain yearns for, but that was what made the expedition exciting.
I was obsessed with a grey, velvet-lined drawer that had a shelf within it (HOW COOL!) full of broken pieces of jewelry, mini prayer books, buttons, keys, and safety pins. Lots of safety pins.
My eyes would scan each item as I pushed some to the side and picked up others. What was its story? Why was it there?
The best part about my “exploring”?
The smells. The whiffs of perfume samples; brand-new leather cowboy boots housed in closets freshly painted with wood varnish; my grandma’s clean moo moos.
This is how I’d pass my summer days until about 4pm and we could go into the pool.
(My grandpa wouldn’t let us go in during peak sun exposure hours. He wanted to protect our skin. Very out of character for his machismo self, but maybe it’s something he learned when picking fruit in the fields when he came to the US).
As a kid I could spend hours just going through people’s stuff. Getting to know who they were through their things. Playing pretend about their lives.
It’s not a surprise I decided to act and write.
It’s the exploration that’s fascinating to me.
I wanna know what it’s like to be you. To explore your world from the inside out. What’s in your metaphoric dresser?
If I asked you what you loved doing during your childhood summer’s, what would you tell me?
Did you corral all the neighborhood kids together to play pretend? What a natural director.
Or did you lose yourself drawing in your graden? Hey, there artist.
I don’t know why we let go of the things from childhood that make us feel the most joy, but I’m so glad as adults we can tap back into that whenever we want.
Whatever it looks like for you, I hope you find ways to reconnect to that again too.
All my love,
monauar / منور
