Memories in a box

We have been cleaning out Granny Mae's house. An older couple will be renting it soon, well, tomorrow! It's all happened so fast. They were going to move in Sept. or Oct., then their house sold so they had to move it up, so we've really been busy. We had to clean out a room across the road from the house so we could put Granny's things there. This room held boxes on top of boxes, years worth of items belonging to my parents that they moved with them as we moved around when I was younger. Well, when we moved back to Tennessee in 1981 this room was used as a storage room for all their stuff....40 years worth of stuff! Mom and I began the process of going through the spider infested boxes. Dad didn't have much hope for us because Mom keeps everything. Mom would open a box and go through each item recalling each memory, what state we lived in when this was bought, where she had made this and on and on. I told her we'd never get through all the boxes if she kept talking about each little item and remembering....Well, we got to some boxes containing my memories. I made this in kindergarten. I carried this with me everywhere. I kept this under my bed, I remember wearing this, on and on I went with each memory. There were so many things I had forgotten about! The pink Raggedy Ann music box (still works!) with a bunch of plastic necklaces and bracelets intertwined, plus some rocks and bottlecaps. I kept everything. It runs in my family ya know. A set of Dr. Seuss books. A set of Judy Blume books. My baby clothes. My brother's baby clothes. My toy gun. My toy top. My drum. A bunch of little purses. A collection of posters of movie stars from the 1970's. More books. More books. More books. I could open a book store. Mom kept it all. So many memories. It was hard to decide what to throw away, what to keep. It had been kept all this time, and now we had to trash it? Mom did very well. We had 2 trailer loads of trash! She threw away all kinds of afghans, wall hangings and other things she had made. In Texas. In Oklahoma. In Florida. In Michigan. She did throw away some things that needed throwing away. And she kept glassware and other important items like the ashtray I made in Michigan in art class. (I asked her if she was sure it was an ash tray.) She kept the letter I wrote her telling her I would babysit my brother but she did owe me a million dollars. (I was 11 or so). What did I keep? Plenty. Books of course. Some old toys of mine that will look cool in my cabinet I'm creating (another story). I kept photos and awards I found in a partially ruined scrapbook. I kept a little swim suit and a petticoat of mine from 38 years ago. I kept my old comic books. I kept too much probably. But there are some things you just can't part with.

"Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things."