What makes unpacking a house similar to Christmas?

You never know what you are going to unwrap when unpacking boxes labeled 'breakables' and 'knick knacks.'  

Yesterday I found sea shell after sea shell and other treasured collectibles that had so many memories attached to them. This has truly been the highlight of unpacking. Remembering much of my past in these object. I am nearly done with the un-boxing and I almost don't want to see an end to it. Every little item boxed up has an event and memory I treasure. It is the memory behind it that makes it more special than the object itself, ho

wever ugly or knarled it may be. 

Yesterday, I came accross this small, tan, and ugly donkey statue  that my Mother once had in her bathroom and that previously used to belong to our Lake Burton house. No one else had wanted this donkey when Mom's siblings divided the possessions among themselves after the lake house sold. Mom reluctantly took it home with her remembering that it used to be hers. She came to find out that Dad really liked it, so we kept it in o

ur living room for the longest time until Mom decided to put it in her bathroom.

Since then, there have been so many memories attached to this donkey, but the most memorable one happened when Hannah was just learning to use the potty...

Hannah was 2 or 2 1/2 years old. Because Mom showed her how to use the potty in her bathroom and because that was where

 her step stool was, she only used Mom's bathroom. One day Hannah was needing to use the bathroom and had run to the the toilet, but came running back sobbing and shouting out, "Mommy, he is looking at me." Hannah took Mom's hand and led her to the bathroom pointing emphatically to the donkey statue that was posing by the sink and facing the direction of the toilet with that whimsical smile on his face. Thinking that Hannah was merely scared of the donkey,  Mom removed him from the bathroom momentarily while Hannah was in the bathroom and placed it back where it was when Ha

nnah had finished washing her hands.

This went on for a couple of weeks. One day, Mom happened to be in her bathroom cleaning or taking out the laundry from the hamper, when she noticed the donkey was turned with its face to the wall. Hannah must have had to use the bathroom so bad that she couldn't wait for Mom to take Donkey away from the room so she turned it around instead. What we had all mistakenly thought of as a fear of the donkey itself, was really just the need for privacy. For several weeks Mom had grown accustomed to seeing the donkey faced away from the toilet and often would forget to shift it back to its original position. Then Hannah grew out of her ways and the donkey was forgotten and later put among a pile of give-aways in the hallway. In memory of Hannah and the donkey, I couldn't resist and adopted him as my own.