Jake bought a humidor once, on a whim. It was very expensive and he stopped using it after a month.

After Jake moved out, I had to pack his things and ship them off to his company's warehouse in Oakland. At the time, I was angry. Really, really angry. I figure this is normal and healthy and don't waste a lot of time feeling bad about it. I didn't get vindictive - save for not packing his things terribly neatly. And maybe, maybe finding that the cat had hairballed into one of the boxes and pretending not to notice. Otherwise, I didn't act on my anger — save for this:

That humidor — I took it outside and stomped it into pieces. I figured Jake hadn't touched it or thought about it in years, it wasn't something he cared about, and jumping up and down on top of the stupid thing would go a long way towards making me feel better.

While packing up my living room tonight, I pulled down a stack of books and found Jake's baseball behind them. This ball is from high school and it's one of the very, very few things he's held onto that long. This is something that means a whole lot to him.

Realistically, the chances of Jake ever unpacking the boxes I packed for him are slim. The chances of him even coming back to this country are slim. If I just threw this baseball away, he would likely never know.

This, then, may be the kind of thing that determines what kind of person you are: sitting in a half-packed living room, holding a baseball, wondering whether to throw it away, knowing he may never know, or drive it to Oakland, knowing he may never know I did that either.