Memories

Are you a pack rat?

I tend to waver between my genetic tendencies to save everything (like my father) and make junk fly (like my mother). I toss quite a bit and save what I think is important. At least it's important at the time--eventually even bank deposit carbons become trash. Periodically, I go through my closets and files to weed out the useless and unnecessary. Clothes I never wear? donated to La Croix Rouge (Red Cross)! Long-expired warantees for my kitchen appliances? Dumped in the paper recycling bin downstairs!

Inevitably, I come across a stack of pictures, cards, and other mementos that I can never bring myself to throw away. I have several notes from my former students with their teenage thanks for helping them bring up their grades, deal with their parents, etc. I figure that gratefulness from a teenager is so rare, I should frame these notes in gold! I have a letter that Dad left for me to find on the day he ended his Israel visit in April 1997. Various pictures of my cousin Bailey and her dog Roger are side-by-side with a college graduation card from a guy we all called "Gimpy." I laugh when I read some poems I wrote in an obviously melodramatic frame of mind. I carefully unfold crayon drawings that my friend Beth's kids have given me. I reread the back of the Maryland postcard my 13 year old sister sent me from a school field trip in downtown Baltimore.

I think I keep these pictures and cards because everytime I "find" them again, I smile. For a few moments, I'm back in college, Israel, my family living room or on vacation at the beach. Not every memory is worth reliving; there were certainly hard moments, too (hence the nostalgic poems) but in my file of treasures, it's only the best moments that I save.