One of the joys of owning an older house is that you have random nooks and crannies to store things, usually in highly inconvenient places. One of our “crannies” is only accessible through a small door in the back of Madi’s closet, where we store things like Ben’s hockey gear from law school, all the boxes to our crystal, and bins of “memories”. Mine are full of old school papers, music boxes, yearbooks, spelling bee medals…and all sorts of odds and ends.
I don’t ever look in them, but when Madi brought up that she was interested in getting a flower press, I immediately thought of the one I had as a kid. Maybe…just maybe…it was in one of my memory boxes, so I went on a hunting expedition into the dusty corners of the crawl space. I didn’t find my flower press, but I did find…
I also found a pile of half-filled journals from different periods of my life. I pulled out a couple from junior high…they were filled with secret crushes, DC Talk concerts, beige dress shoes, ear piercing, and plenty of pre-teen angst. It was fascinating, not just because of the “oh-so-typical” things that I was consumed with (fitting in, pimples, boys, arguments with friends). It was also fascinating because it gave me a refresher course into who I was at that age. There is a difference between remembering the big stuff versus the everyday stuff. I remember trips and events from when we lived in Connecticut, but today I read about things that I had forgotten…a despised dessert ban, an old nickname (Rach-o-vac), all the time I spent babysitting the little girl across the street, my favorite blazer…
Memories come in all shapes and sizes – in old shell collections, a faded camp polo shirt, dried flowers – but the memories that translate most vividly for me come in the form of words about the past. I was transported in those journals to my former self, and while I groaned and shook my head at how silly I was, it helped me to remember where I came from and why I am the person I am today.
My memory boxes are still sitting in the hallway…I don’t think I’m quite ready to shove them back into the crawl space yet. Until then, I will dig around…searching for shreds of forgotten memories…
