I have 21 tea towels for the kitchen. I counted them as we packed up boxes from every cupboard and forgotten drawer. They were great for wrapping liquor bottles, but I was surprised when the last bourbon bottle was wrapped and I still had a stack of way too many tea towels. My younger self judges harshly. Some had been gifts, others were purchased in haste as my husband, Dave, and I moved from one apartment to the next, needing something for the kitchen as we unpacked and ate frozen pizza to Aretha Franklin on vinyl. Four of them are red with striped patterns. Two are blue with striped patterns. One has a photo print of asparagus; another carrots. One has cartoon cowgirls on horseback; another cartoon cowboys slinging pistols. One says “Uffda” — an homage to my midwestern roots. Another is an eye chart with animals found in Montana. Both gifts. Two are as neatly folded as the day they were received: pure white with embroidery, too nice for everyday use. I imagine them holding bread rolls in a basket someday. Or, if neglected to be enjoyed while I’m alive, then draped over my casket. Also preferably stocked with dinner rolls. I shoved the remaining tea towels in the liquor box, except for the two “guest tea towels,” which I laid neatly on top, and sealed up the box. Cocktails — and messes — would have to wait until the new home.
I didn’t know I’d become the person with 21 tea towels all folded neatly in a drawer “just in case.” I also didn’t know I’d be moving back to my hometown after nearly two decades, especially when at my departure, I shook my fist and vowed never to return. We had lived in Montana nearly 15 years. I was proudly a sixth generation Montanan, which made our new son a seventh. The mountains had been the backdrop to our life for so long. Mornings were spent pedaling up steep trails in the summer and calling the snow phone in the winter. “Good morning and thank you for calling the Bridger Bowl snow phone! This morning we have 10 new inches, recorded at the top of the Alpine lift.” I knew every turn of every trail, the best streets to bike home late at night, which breweries would allow us to run into which friends, where to sit at the ski movie premiers, and the best tree lines to ski at the mountain. Kitchen appliances weren’t the only things getting packed away. Most of these memories were of a by-gone ski town and our youthful roaring twenties quickly fading in the rear view mirror.
I started to panic about the tea towels. Where would they go in the new house? We were moving into a house back in Minnesota, minutes from both of our parents, that we had never seen. I had looked at pictures, zooming in and out on every detail, but what if there wasn’t a drawer substantial enough for the tea towels? 21 tea towels takes up a lot of space. I completely forgot to check!
The thought of reducing the size of my kitchen towel collection never occurred to me. I did not feel sentimental or especially attached to any of these towels, but for some reason they all had to come with me across two states, they would require significant thought, and I must find the right drawer.
We said goodbye to our Montana house on a Thursday morning, leaving our keys on the counter and locking ourselves out. The mountains looked even more beautiful that day than the five thousand days before. Dave lumbered east in the U-Haul and I drove my vehicle with baby, dog, and our dozens of houseplants. We met up in Dickinson six hours later at a hotel built for the oil boom, now empty from the oil bust. Each room came equipped with a kitchen for the long-term field workers. It even had real plates, glasses, and cutlery. It made for a fine studio apartment. Except on the counter, standing tall and out of place: a roll of stark white paper towels. I could have furnished the entire floor of rooms with my precious set of tea towels.
We pulled into Fargo mid-afternoon. Two lanes of traffic turned into three and then four. Part of the journey felt familiar. I recognized buildings that had been there for decades, the ones I would always pass before I pulled off the interstate and made exactly three turns to my parents’ house. The other part made my stomach twist. Fargo was an “in-and-out town” for us. We swung in and we swung out. Now, we were parking. Parking in the driveway of a midwestern home on a midwestern block with my midwestern family standing at the back door, waiting for us to turn the key and hang up our coats. Our realtor even showed up. “I want to see your faces when you walk in.”
We have lived a lot of places, slept between many different walls. — hell, we are nearly 40 years old. This was far from our first place. But, watching everyone watch us as we unlocked the door and walked inside, it felt like things were already in motion for us, like this place was expecting us.
Days later, when the boxes were opened (“finally, the bourbon!”) and shelves started to fill, rest assured that every single tea towel, all 21 of them, fit nicely in a drawer just under the fancy tea cups.