What you would grab if your house was burning down is an old question, asked lightly at dinner parties and on roadies. But with Victoria on fire again last week, it stopped being theoretical.
The reckoning of bushfire season has made me calculate what I’d put in my own shipping container. For me, all the stuff I’ve spent years buying and dusting and insuring, the things I thought defined me or connected me to the past, got weighed against another question: can you replace it, or can you not?
Which means most of it would be left behind in a flash. People and pets are automatic inclusions, of course — and hate to say it, but probably phones too — but my list was short after that.
The department store Santa photo where one kid is wearing a choker, one has a broken arm and one is on the knee of the only Santa ever to look off chops on meth. My dog Maggie’s ashes and collar. My grandmother Neita’s handwritten recipe book. My other grandmother Beatrice’s ruby ring.
The copy of Gone with the Wind inscribed on my 13th birthday by Mum. Ancient black suede Chloé sandals. The painting Dad brought home from Bali after his cousin died there in a 1974 Pan Am crash. If it fits in the container, the Moran modular my parents bought in 1977.
स्रोत: Brisbanetimes Com Au
