the end of something

this morning we used up the last of the 'little bottles', the last little bottle of conditioner, the type they leave for you in hotels and depending on the price of the room, determines thereafter the state of your hair.

These little bottles have a historic place in my life, a history i am happy to see the last of. My ex husband was a collector; not of antiques or art, but sachets of sugar from cafes and small bottles of hotel issue hair product. When we lived together he travelled a lot and upon his return from a trip to wherever, he would invariably empty his bag and his jacket pockets and deposit a couple of these bottles in a bathroom draw and toss a sachet or two of sugar in a kitchen cabinet. In and of itself, this habit is not a bad one. what did infuriate me was that he never, ever used them, he just brought them home and 'put them'. i, as a matter of principle, refused to 'manage' them, i figured they were his problem and let the collection grow; damned if i was going to take responsibility for something else.

so when the marriage gasped its final breath and he moved out, he took all his personal stuff, his toys, the modern electrical equipment (of course) and left behind the dogs, the cats, the kids and not surprisingly, thousands of these bottles and sachets. The sachets were kind of fun at the time to consolidate; i ripped, tipped and poured until i had a mountain weight of almost a kilo of sugar. it was theraputic and i vented my rage at being left to deal with so much of his unwanted past, on these little paper bags. But if you have ever tried to extract shampoo and conditioner from these guest portions then you know they take their own sweet time to drain and are more rage building than venting. So i have been sending the kids off to school camps with these and we have been using them at home, intermittently dipping in to the bags under the sink to use them up. 5 years later the last of these little bottles has now been used and its little soapy carcass tossed into the recycling. it's funny how it's the small, somewhat insignificant things in life which can sometimes be embedded with great meaning and be symbols of our past and our futures, our hopes and our dreams, our srengths and our weaknesses. i feel quietly relieved.