Momentos remind us of the past

I have been sorting through old memories lately and discovered that I am more of a packrat than I realized. I found our marriage license, and a rental agreement from the house we rented when we were first married. A newspaper article about people I used to know popped up. There were a couple of yellowed cartoons that were as relevant today as they were when they were printed. I found a blouse that I didn’t know I had. Best of all it still fits.

A lot of stuff went straight into the trash, such as notes from a bookkeeping class I took in high school. I have no idea why I saved that or why the writing was so tiny and neat.

There was a menu from The Upper Krust, a sandwich shop where my husband and I first met. At the time the sandwiches seemed expensive but today they would be considered cheap. The last time I checked, the Krust has been closed for years. My cousin in Dayton said it is now a nightclub. We have many good memories of that place even if we did go home smelling like corned beef and pastrami.

I discovered a bunch of letters from my mom. I didn’t realize how bad her handwriting had gotten until I compared the earlier letters to the last few she wrote. The letters and pictures from my daughter were precious. Her letters often contained hand-drawn pictures. Again, seeing how her handwriting changed from year to year was like watching her grow up all over again.

There were a lot of leftovers from unfinished craft projects. I called my granddaughter, Emma, and asked if she would be interested in craft supplies. She said, “Sure.” I can only picture her family wondering why I sent that stuff.

I found more cameras than I knew we had. These were all film cameras. Most of them were the point and shoot variety. I heard someone call them expensive paperweights. I made sure to remove any batteries just in case they decided to leak at some future date. With that many cameras, it is no wonder we had so many envelopes full of pictures. Handfuls of negatives went straight to the trash. 

There were photos of vacations we had taken. There were the usual Christmas and other holiday images. Family, flowers and cats were the subjects of most of the others. There was even a series of shots of our house showing that we actually have made progress through the years.

We have annual pictures of somebody standing beside a white pine tree. When we moved here there were three pine trees between us and the neighbors. At the time the grass was taller than the trees. One got stepped on and died. I put tomato cages over the other two. The neighbor lady tripped over the cage and was not happy that I put it there. That tree also died. The remaining tree was taller than the garage when the electric company said they could either top the tree or chop it down. Down it came.

Sorting through old memories is a good thing to do. Sometimes we forget who we used to be. Sometimes we find things that should have been disposed of years ago. Documents, photos, books and all the other detritus of our lives can serve as reminders of who we were before the world went mad because of a virus.