Keepsakes

This blog originally posted Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 1:41pm

It’s moving time again. Should be a time of hope and excitement. Moving to a new place, close to the church, close to work, close to my daughter’s school. It’s a larger place with everything we needed and prayed for and then some. Like I said, it should be a time of hope and excitement.

Should be…

Instead, I find myself in an introspective mood.I open boxes that have been packed away in closets for years. Boxes that we have moved more than once in our life’s journey without opening them. I told my wife that we should just throw them out without opening them. We haven’t needed what is in them up to now, chances are, we won’t ever need what is in them.

She was firmly against this. “What if there are some documents in there that have private information on them. We could be in danger of identity theft.” Sometimes I can’t figure out who is more practical, her or me.

Truthfully, I think she is just afraid to throw out what might be sentimental later, but she has figured out over the years how to speak my language.

So. I open boxes and begin to sort.

In reality, I am not opening boxes, I am performing exploratory archeology on my own life. What are these wonderful artifacts that are so valuable as to warrant carrying with us through the years.

I find my junior high yearbook. (shudder). I thought all evidence of those early teen years were destroyed years ago. How did that survive. I’ve worked so hard to repress memories of acne, awkwardness, hair in new places, nocturnal emissions, deep desires for things that I don't really understand, and strange body odors. (shudder, shudder)

I dig deeper and found an old award from Bank of America. Evidently, I was a very valuable employee to them at one point in time according to the Lucite and metal award. Not valuable enough to avoid layoffs, but worth enough to get a trophy that I store in a box.

Digging even deeper in the box, I find a checkbook from an old bank account closed more than a decade ago. Maybe my wife was right about the identity theft danger. Of course, there is no money in there now and there wasn’t much back then. Not sure why I still have it.

I found several ceramic coffee cups, pens, notepads, and other geegaws from trade shows and sales visits over the years at PTI. I even found one of the PTI coozies that someone had thousands of printed for us (it took years to get rid of all of those). I am sure this stuff was supposed to convince me to purchase something from these companies or to have loyalty in some form or another. Now it is just junk taking up space.

Next, I stumble on something truly historic. A green plastic army man toy from my youth. Now those were the years. No bills, no responsibility, and you could buy green army men for 99 cents a bucket and hold grand scale battles in the backyard with violence that rivaled Stalingrad or Passchendaele.

Here now is the little orange New Testament that some missionary was handing out in front of my high school one day. I wasn’t Christian then and only opened it briefly to highlight the 23rd Psalm. At the time, I only knew about that Psalm and the two quotes, ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged,’ and ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ Turns out, I was wrong about one of those. I never read that Bible, but I carried it in my backpack like a good luck amulet through most of my senior year. Maybe God would look kindly on a guy carrying a Bible around and find me a girlfriend, or at least help me pass algebra.

Wow, a pack of Zig-Zag papers. We won’t go into why I had those, suffice it to say that I don’t use them anymore. That chapter is long ago closed.

There is much more in the box: an old watch that doesn’t work, a broken pocket knife, a first place ribbon for some forgotten contest, a report card from high school, a set of ‘Spanish for Beginners’ cassette tapes from the library that I long ago was billed for, a leather work glove (just one, mind you), some marbles, and some old school reports.

Sigh.

Almost all of the box is garbage and there are still a dozen boxes like it to go. Most of this stuff, though a part of my life at one time, has no bearing on my life now. And yet… there is almost a talisman-like feel to some of the items, a mysterious force that entices me to put them back into the box and hang on to them.I know it isn’t just me. I have seen the houses of friends and relatives. What is it that makes us keep these insignificant mementos like the detritus that flows alongside a ship in harbor?

You see, I know the truth of it all.

The most valuable treasures in my life are those that don’t fit in a box.

How do you package the first time I held my daughter and prayed over her? How do I box up the first embrace with my lovely wife? What about the bittersweet memories of first kisses, crushes, and stolen moments.Where do I store memories of my Uncle Bob teaching me how to shoot and camp, of playing poker and filling a room with cigar smoke with Rick and Joe, of being baptized in Christ?

It’s these liminal moments that make the best treasures. Those times where you cross a threshold into a new state. Things will never be the same now, something has changed. These treasures, though rich and important are not always pleasant.

They include the first time you lose someone close to you through death, your first broken heart, the first time your child is in the hospital, the first time you were fired.These are the important things in life. This is what matters.

I know that on my deathbed, I will not be asking for someone to give me more junk; I’ll be asking for just a few more moments with my loved ones. Yet, I hang on to the junk.

Writing this isn’t getting those boxes sorted.

On second thought, maybe I will through them all out.