Another Go at Our Memories

Five years ago, when we packed up and moved from our home of 25 years, I spent hours and weeks sorting through boxes of letters and cards and childhood memorabilia (report cards! piano recitals!).  It was sometime fun and sometimes very sad as I tried to look up friends from long ago and realized they were no longer with us.  There were many items that I saved, packed into shoeboxes and then into two larger boxes.  They found a home in our spacious garage at our apartment complex and I forgot about them.

Last week, I noticed water on the floor of the garage.  It was coming from a faucet that was leaking--a faucet that we had never used.  Sadly, it meant that the boxes were damp on the bottom.  I began a rescue operation in which items were pulled out and deposited in dry boxes.  I had to throw out a few things but many may be salvageable even if they smell a bit moldy right now.  

We had to laugh at some of the cards we had given each other over the years and some of the handiwork of our offspring.  (Dr. Dan VanderKam and his secretary Laura VanderKam--sexism that I guess did not matter at the time).  Most of the items I put away for another day.  I don't have the zeal for sorting it all out again.  

And then there were all the work items I saved thinking that I might tutor as a volunteer again.  Covid put an end to that ambition for a couple of years and now it just seems like too much effort.  But I found I  could not throw it all out.  Six volumes of Megawords?  Word charts?  A guide to phonics?  Too many memories and hard work were represented by those books and information.

So what will happen to it all?  Maybe I will be ambitious again and be more ruthless in editing all that paper.  If we move to assisted living, we would need a storage unit for it all.  That would give me some motivation. Maybe I will pass on and my children, in cleaning out our place, will find it easy to dump it all. But for right now,  I don't have to do anything but let some wet paper dry out and postpone most decisions for another day.