Memories

Boxes seem to be muliplying.  I thought I was finished with boxes of cards and letters and programs and clippings and then another one shows up.  Once again, the trash and recyclable bins are getting full.  Many items are hard to throw out.  Maybe when the moving time gets closer, I'll get more disciplined.

I took apart a scrapbook I made at age 15 when my family took a trip to Quebec and upstate New York.  I have a friend who collects postcards so she got all of those.  I remember parts of that trip well.  My dad who may have been leery of driving on steep Quebec streets hired a driver to give us a tour.  That driver offered me and my sister cigarettes and I was thrilled to be treated like a grown-up.  He also brought us to a convent, rang a bell in this dark entryway, and a nun came out of the darkness with a skull in a jar--supposedly some explorer from early times.  No wonder that sight has stuck in my mind all these years!

I found clippings of the 1956 Hudsonville tornado that killed several in the area and devastated many homes and businesses.  I remember being in our basement and wondering if our relatives were OK and Jim who lived much closer remembers seeing it.  Our high school Latin teacher was a woman who went back to college after the tornado killed her husband and child.

There was a touching photo of my Dad smiling from his hospital bed in a veteran's hospital in Detroit where he spent a year recovering from back surgery in 1950.  For me that stay was an adventure; for my mother and him it must have been so difficult.  They wondered if he would ever walk again.  But in later years of his life he was known as the walking man as he walked miles to get his morning donut with his buddies.

And then there was the album of high school graduation photos.  As I pulled them out, I tried to remember names.  I quizzed Jim on them.  Long forgotten folks came to mind--especially when we looked at the back for identification!  With some reluctance, I threw most of them out.  We have yearbooks that will preserve those names and photos.

There was an autograph album from 8th grade full of silly rhymes like "By hook or by crook I'll be the last to write in your book."    "1 car 2 kisses 3 weeks later Mr. and Mrs."  It made me smile and I decided to save it--for now.

So many people have come and gone in our lives.  There were lovely notes from my 6th grade students, letters from Scotland friends, letters from graduate student days at Harvard,  and  letters from North Carolina friends.  There were letters from family members mailed to the many places we have lived over the years.  It's hard to think how important all those people were in our lives and now some of them are gone and most of them have disappeared from our lives. 
At the same time I am feeling grateful for new friends here in South Bend.  Emails from two of them brought tears of gratitude to my eyes yet yesterday.  Texts from Dan and Laura and Jeff were also received happily yesterday as was a phone call from Dan.   But of those there are no records for me to peruse, Lord willing, ten years from now.