You Never Know: On Memory and Memoir and Packing Light

by Rebecca Kuder

1972

Now I’m five and a half, well, actually, I’m five years and eight months, and it’s almost July, and we have to drive from Yellow Springs to Boulder because the Rainbow Family is going to be there and we’re going to see our friend Peggy, too, so I have to put things into my red backpack.

I put things for drawing, like construction paper and my set of twenty-five cray-pas, with the pretty, pretty blues and oranges, and even though some of the cray-pas are broken, they still work; and my turquoise pillow, the smaller of the two special pillows my mom made for me out of shiny satin which stay cool so I can flip the pillow and have coolness on my cheek, which feels good, and which is stuffed with old pantyhose, and I take the smaller one (just the turquoise and not the purple), because they tell me I might need extra space in my pack; and a photo of my cat, None, who is from another litter of kittens that Mother Kritty pushed out of her womb, and after those kittens were born, I asked my parents how many kittens we could keep from that litter and they said “None,” so I held up the little gray tiger striped one, who was my favorite, and said, “This is None,” and so in the backpack I put his picture and also a picture doesn’t take up very much space at all; and I put in a string for tying things together if needed, so nothing will get lost; and I want to take the red phone cord—just the cord—from the kitchen phone, because its curliness is so fancy and I like to play with it, and I don’t need it but I love it, but they said to leave it at home, attached to the phone; and I take my best socks, the ones that don’t fall down as much as the other ones, because we’ll have to hike a long way to get to the Rainbow Family Gathering, that’s what they say.

And I save room for the small wineskin that they got just for me. (To fill in the morning before we leave home because the water at home tastes good and does not taste like chemicals like every other water.)

(It’s called a wineskin but it’s not for wine, it’s for water.)

And of course I pack Leo. My lion. My friend and protector, because Leo is always strong and brave, no matter what. Leo has prickly golden fur that’s so good to touch (like the fabric that covers our red sofa), and a tiny metal button in his left ear like an earring stud, and he has orange glass eyes, and his tail sometimes curves around his left hind leg. And I love how he always stands by, strong and brave and calm, like a friendly guard, or like a good, good, king. Like my friend Leo.

And they said to bring a roll of toilet paper in my pack, and when I asked why, they said just in case, you never know, so I bring some. And dried apple slices, and dry roasted soybeans, which turn to crunchy dust when you eat them but they also taste sort of nutty and they are still food. Which I also might need, if I get hungry before lunch and we are still hiking. Might be glad for the snack. Things to carry should be useful and packed as tight as possible, but they said to save room to pack more things later, when we are on the road, just in case.

(And once we are on the road heading west in our red VW bus I will notice that I forgot my toothbrush, but who cares, we will figure it out.)

You shouldn’t bring things you don’t really need or really love. Even nice things, you have to think about each thing. Because you have to carry things for a long ways. Save room just in case, because anything can happen when you go far away from home. You might have to find or even buy other things, and then carry them, too. Save room. For whatever else you might need to carry. You can’t think of everything, and you never know.

2024

Six months before my trip to Wayward Writers Camp in the Catskills, I inserted a page in my planner, to make a packing list. Turning the pages I could fast forward to that future point in time, one page before the week of my flight, and jot down what to bring (masks, test kits, refill the fountain pens, pack the fairy lights), and savor the possibility, make marks on paper to practice the act of hope that I would be able to go. A trip to manifest and not cancel. Too many plans have been scrapped and erased from the planner these last four years—get refundable tickets even though they cost more, you never know. Hyper-vigilance and disappointments.

This time I was headed to the Mutual Aid Society, a relatively new Utopia, nestled in the Catskill Mountains.

At the top of my list, in orange pencil, I wrote ‘pack light.’

A week before the trip, I recopied the list, made it more legible and visually satisfying—another small act of hope, a wish for the trip to happen. A spell, cast with hand, pen, and paper.

A few days before the trip, I went to the attic and brought down my red suitcase, the one that’s technically small enough to carry on, the one with wheels. Wheels, because my back is older now. I did laundry and laid things out, spread things on the bed in piles, categories, and crossed each noun off the list.

The planning, the anticipation, the uncertainty. (Check the weather a thousand times, adjust the list, roll up clothes for a dress rehearsal of packing. Allow one more day to edit. Cross more nouns off the list.) Orange pencil, pack light, aspiration. The red suitcase was soon crammed full and not exactly light, but around the edge there’s an extra zipper to unzip, like unbuttoning pants after a big meal, to make more room if needed.

My red suitcase does not go on my back but it is red, forever red, like the backpack I packed and then strapped to my back, and lugged up a mountain in Colorado, more than fifty years ago.

And, miraculous, I didn’t have to cancel the trip to the Catskills. Despite everything that could have gone wrong, I made it, and had what I needed.

As I planned for five days with a group of literary badasses in a place on earth that strives toward utopi-ation, I could not know that while surrounded by those hearts, words, and soft-swelling mountains—of the many things I might pull from the bag of memory to write about—I would fixate on the small red backpack I hauled up the mountain as a child in, in Colorado, to that hippie-woven Utopia, that Rainbow place.

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[Actually, be honest. No matter how hard you write in 2024—in the Catskills and when you return home—you cannot recall what you actually packed and carried in your red backpack in 1972, when you were five-years-and-eight-months in the red VW bus with your parents headed to the Rainbow Family Gathering. They carried much bigger packs than you did. They loved you, and you all carried something. Your pack was red. Two photos help you remember. In one, you sit with the pack on your shoulders and you smile and hold an unusual white flower. In the other, you sit near a pile of gear and a gods’ eye, where many strangers also sit, everyone resting, and people have walking sticks and packs and some are shirtless and you are not smiling. You look very tired. Maybe your pack held a bandanna, a soft toy, a change of clothes. Maybe you did carry dried apple slices, which were probably wrapped in foil or wax paper, maybe. That was before so much plastic. You recall the flavor and texture of dried apple slices—soft, sweet, kind of chewy, and when you were a kid that snack kept you going.

Which toy did you bring? Did you bring Leo? Or is that just a story you impose to fill the huge gaps in memory? Did you bring things to write and draw with? (You always do, now.) What mattered most back then, what did your young body haul up that mountain, hidden within the red?

What about first aid, Band-Aids, bug spray? Did they think of your comfort? Did you sleep in a tent, or under the stars?

The gaps in memory feel like another child’s secret that she will never tell. How much do your parents remember?

Would either of them still remember what their only child put in her pack? Or what they put in their own?

And what would happen if you were to ask them?]

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The color red will take you places. Hard to miss, easy to see, but everyone has red baggage these days and certainly we all have some version of a semi-forgotten small red backpack, loaded with who knows what, but still packed and ready to go.

About the Rainbow Family Gathering, look at Rainbow Gathering on Wikipedia.
About the Mutual Aid Society, read Heaven is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk.

Rebecca Kuder’s Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book, is available at Literary Kitchen. Her novel, The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival, is available from What Books Press. Her stories and essays have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books; Hags on Fire; Bayou Magazine; Shadows and Tall Trees; Year’s Best Weird Fiction; The Rumpus; Crooked Houses; and elsewhere. She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with the writer Robert Freeman Wexler and their daughter.