Memories…
March 3rd, 2006
So it turned out I considered myself a bit too sick to go dancing tonight. Breaking out in fits of coughing in the middle of a lesson isn’t exactly something your dance partner wants to deal with. So I took the better side of valor and stayed at home, managing, even short on breath, to get though my weight routine. At that point, I was left with endorphins keeping me awake, so I decided to do something I had subconsciously decided to do a while ago: Sort through, and legitimately toss out, all those things of mine that I will likely never need again.
More than anything, this is turning out to be a trip down memory lane, and my initial productivity has languished as I stop to contemplate each symbol as it passes through my hands. Symbols… an interesting realization, how readily they tie to my memories. A Canoe Paddle, etched with my two summers in the Minnesota Boundary Waters. An old, velvet suit, waist 42, reminiscent of my time playing Douglas Holt. An old, hand-carved squirrel- memories of my grandfather who passed away in… 86? An old badly-assembled ‘transient valise’, my freshman year as an architect. A stack of drawings, years spent in the studio.
But more… my mom has, carefully, collected a chest of my things. A chest I’ve never really gone through, but now…my god. The robe I was baptized in, my first pair of glasses, the hair from my first haircut (I used to be blonde). The tie from my school uniform, a towel from a pool I used to love to go to. My highschool basketball jersey, my baby bottle…. Pictures from my the earliest days of my life, things I barely remember, if at all. An entire box of goodbye cards signed… by people I just don’t remember. At all. But for some reason they mean something to me. Pictures from my dad when he was… well, not much older than me now (I have his eyes). Pictures of my mom (Ulrike looks just like her).
The detritus of my life is many and varied. These objects that have shaped my life. And yet each of them, in its own way, is a key into my mind. Should I keep them? Should I toss them? Should I choose? Which memory is more important? Which ones could I keep?
I’m keeping the trunk. I think I’m going to start adding to it.
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