Memory Lane

Another guest post from Mommy:

Sorry to do back to back guest posts but Pete is gone on his Hood to Coast relay weekend and I'm done thinking in kid talk. I need some adult time. Plus in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed I started tackling a project that I've been meaning to do since we first moved back to Utah..TWO YEARS AGO.

When I moved out of my parents house to go to the University of Utah (GO UTES!), I had to pack up my entire room. I had a brother who had already picked out new sheets for my bed before I could hug anybody good bye. This was actually quite the feat because I am not a "pack rat" per say but I am sentimental and have a hard time deciding what I really want to hang on to or what will matter in five years. I am good with getting rid of trash so I have that in my favor. To make a long story short, I had two big black garbage bags, one HUGE storage container, a medium sized paper box, and I think five shallow storage containers full of my "keepsakes" in my parents' storage room. Flash forward to September 2008 and living with my parents again, I kept saying how I should go through all those boxes and condense and show Pete my supposedly very important "keepsakes."

And now here we are...the end of August 2010...I finally have my own house which those boxes had to come to. They really do take up quite a bit of space. However there was good news. When we first moved in, I noticed that the garbage bags were full of my teddy bear collection. At one time I had over 50+ bears. This meant decorating the girls room and making them feel like they had toys was a cinch....oh dear...I just remembered that there is on more big storage container that I forgot to count in my tally...that's just sad. Anyway, I seriously saved everything! I have been enjoying watching Siena play with some of my favorite teddy bears and in another bin I discovered my favorite baby dolls..Sheribeari and Sally and Patchy and she actually shrieked the other morning when she woke up and saw one of the "new" dolls on the couch, "OH! My birthday! Mommy thank you!" I finally had to give a huge bag full of stuffed animals to the DI because I just had so many and I figured if they didn't have true sentimental value they had to go. (I could actually tell you who gave each one to me so I had to start using different criteria...like if I could remember the name I gave it or if it was cuter than the others it got to stay.)

Well during these five evenings that I have had to myself, I dove in to the other boxes that contained yearbooks and newspaper clippings and EVERY NOTE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED. I'm not kidding. I have notes from middle school, high school, I even have these notebooks that I cleverly did with two separate friends. We would each take turns taking the notebook to class and just leave the paper in it. So I even have notes that I wrote. One of these notebooks went with an ex boyfriend who went to another school so it is almost beyond embarrassing to read what I wrote in it. I haven't even had time to really read any of it. I still have three boxes to go through! On the plus side, I've made $22. I thought I had thrown out all the birthday cards I had gotten from my grandparents...turns out I didn't. Good thing too because there was forgotten money in one.

In truth, I have put a lot of paper in my recycle bin and I did throw out all my corsages from high school dances finally but it has been so much fun reliving the moments from my middle school/high school years. (I have not even touched the box with all my finger paintings and papers from elementary school.) I was a happy teenager. I loved high school. Yes I took things too seriously, of course I wasted my time worrying about boyfriends and thinking I would marry them, but I really enjoyed those years. I was a drama geek and I found the playbills and programs from the plays I did and for a moment I felt like I was 16 and ready to do 12 shows as Cesario/Viola in 12th Night..itchy wig and all. I have all my things from church! I have two separate lists of "the man I want to marry"...and you know what, shockingly, I wrote down all the right things! I did marry that man!

I had forgotten some of the awards I had gotten or pictures I had taken. The only thing that has been a real bummer has been not having Pete here to show him all my treasures. Of course in all reality, he would have been majorly overwhelmed and not experienced the joy and nostalgia I was experiencing and honestly he probably would have been annoyed by the end of it. I'm glad I saved these things even if piece by piece I am weeding some things out. Having several years separation has helped me keep sight of what is really nostalgic or important versus just taking up space. Someday, my great great grandchildren could quite possibly have a very clear view of who I was. Of course with the internet and technology and all that we are getting better at journaling (thus the very blog I am typing on) but there is still something about holding a letter from an old boyfriend or missionary. I read somewhere in high school that you should save your old love letters and I just took it to heart.

Kids today are missing out. Everything is on text. My brother (Missionary Marty) sent sweet texts to his girlfriend and vice versa but when Marty left he had to erase all the embarrassingly mushy ones that she had sent so that Eric the younger brother wouldn't have to read them because Eric inherited the phone. And his girlfriend got a new phone and so she has to hang on to her old one and keep it charged occasionally so she can read the sweet texts from him! I don't have that problem. Of course, mine are taking up space but I love it. And you get to see the handwriting which I always love because I like what it shows about you.

Anyway, sorry for the length of this post but I needed to write down the nostalgic high I was experiencing. Slightly ironic that it is in the electronic form but I do intend to put it on paper...not in my own handwriting but hopefully my voice comes through enough.

Thanks for listening!