Memories

Sam start­ed going through his “mem­o­ry box” to find some­thing, then opened mine. He found it, and we framed it—the cov­er of his nov­el now hangs in our home, as it should have quite a while back.

While it was out, I went through my box and threw out a lot of stuff—why do I have so many of Katie’s old school papers, again? As much as I absolute­ly adore my child, I real­ly can’t save absolute­ly every col­or­ing page and draw­ing and card she’s made. I saved a few things from each year and tossed a bunch of cards and oth­er things accu­mu­lat­ed over the years.

I tossed out cor­re­spon­dence from old SOs, too. When you can’t remem­ber just who Raul and Michael are, let­ters pro­fess­ing their undy­ing love aren’t ter­ri­bly impor­tant. I was try­ing to fig­ure out why I had that stuff, though. It was odd to remem­ber, as if it was some­thing about some­one else, that there was a time when I enjoyed look­ing at these memen­tos of past involve­ments when I was feel­ing lone­ly. They made me feel want­ed and desir­able. Now, they’re just paper. I’m sure I cared about those peo­ple at some point, but I’m fair­ly sure I did­n’t meet them in per­son. They were online “romances” as far as I can tell, and from the dates, they hap­pened in the first year that I was real­ly online.

There’s a box of pho­tos around here some­where. I’m just not sure where it is. But there are lots of pho­tos in there that need to be put in albums or some­thing. Maybe I can remem­ber the names of the peo­ple IN the pic­tures! I hope so. Ever since we start­ed get­ting box­es of stuff that belonged to Wayne from Katie’s grand­par­ents, with stacks of pho­tos with no labels or dates or names and no way at all to know who those peo­ple are, the fact that my pic­tures are in the same state has bugged me. I mean, the man is dead, so no mat­ter how impor­tant that stuff might have been to him, we have no con­text at all for it.

Some of the stuff in the mem­o­ry box was odd. There was a copy of a school news­pa­per from the quar­ter I spent at Agnes Scott. I was try­ing to fig­ure out why I kept it, and I wrote an arti­cle that was pub­lished there. Huh? I don’t recall any involve­ment with the paper. But there it was. My stu­dent ID was in there, too—I might scan it in later.

There was also a box of lit­tle pins and medals and rib­bons and such from band and cho­rus and debate and Junior Achieve­ment and Junior Civ­i­tan and Beta Club and Nation­al Hon­or Soci­ety and all man­ner of orga­ni­za­tions that I was involved with in high school. I even found my Brown­ie and Girl Scout pins!

There were maps and such from my trip to Europe for spring break in 1983. There were fold­ers of tru­ly hor­rif­ic poet­ry I wrote in mid­dle and high school—I can’t believe I saved those! I’m not sure what pur­pose they could have oth­er than to make me SO very hap­py that my teen years are long past and that I will not ever have to live through puber­ty again.

There were, how­ev­er, reminders of peo­ple I’d like to talk to again. Doug Edwards, Leigh Ann What­ley Lauinger, and Anne-Mireille Tyson—if you’re out there, I’m think­ing of you and I’m sor­ry we’ve lost touch with each oth­er. I’m a hor­ri­ble cor­re­spon­dent. I’d love to know how Augie Buono is doing. There are peo­ple from way back in high school, like Melis­sa Bon­ner and Tona Fen­ters, who I won­der about. There are plen­ty of oth­ers, of course, but I came across their names today and was think­ing of them.