The junk drawer in my old house was magic. It wasn’t wide or tall but I’m almost positive that its depth would’ve continued forever if I had had arms that long. The great thing about that junk drawer was how it could change your mind on something. I used to be sitting at the table and suddenly have a need for some scissors, some thread, a blueberry muffin, who knows. The point is, I would find myself in need of a random object and unless that object was on the counter in plain sight, my first idea for finding it was usually the junk drawer. The crappy, small, wooden drawer stuck into the counter like an afterthought. The drawer had this excellent little faded gold-painted metal handle and it fit my tiny hand perfectly. I would open that drawer and start digging, all thoughts of my initial mission lost to me with the sight of all the contraptions and items now present. My little fingers would pull tools, string, shoelaces, twisty-ties and all other sorts of things out of that drawer, dropping them on the counter as I continued to dig. Eventually I would settle on some object, perhaps a needlenose pliers that hadn’t been moved in 10 years or maybe an old bill in an envelope that I mistook for a treasure map or the will of the old owners. Following this discovery, I would pile all of the toppings back in and shut the drawer the best I could, never wondering if I had gotten close to the back of the drawer since that clearly didn’t exist, much like the back of the wardrobe isn’t magically not present in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. That drawer was my magical escape, full of possibility and impossibility wrapped around each other with a light covering of junk.
