Wednesday, June 22, 2011

one man's treasure

One more box down. This one happened to be filled with my grandmother's belongings. The stuff she saved! Mostly there were cards. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, Anniversary, Valentines, even get well, and thank you cards. She saved them. I didn't keep them, you understand, but I got that they meant she treasured that we thought of her. That was a nice insight, and I shared it with my cousin, along with some mementos of her father, and her growing up. I'm sure there are things she will throw away as well, but she will at least get to look at them first, and be reminded of how those milestones were treasured by our grandparents.

There was a lot of other paperwork, too. Some of it might have been saved if the items (jewelry, fur coat, etc) were in our possession as well, but that stuff has been taken care of in other ways by other people. So it went, along with loan agreements from the 1920's. It was cool to look at, but save it? I did save a small collection of vintage post cards. Might be worth a little something, although I'm not sure. There's also some old costume jewelry... most of it may even be the odds and ends, I didn't look that closely yet. And photos. Man, the photos. Many of people I don't know, and possibly never did. Some old photos, and a letter written to my grandfather from his mother. Just an ordinary letter, but still, a piece of family history I thought worth keeping. Also some genealogy research done on my grandfather's family, which traces roots to the Mayflower (darn puritans... does that make it all MY fault???)

Anyway, a few items kept and a box emptied. I peek into the past, and a reminder of being cared about. Not only that, being able to share a little of it, too. Not bad. Not bad.

1 comment:

Fran said...

Sometimes old photos are the best. Liv and I were looking through a bin of old photos at a second-hand store in Portland, making up stories about the people there. Y'know, that might not be a bad writing project for your students next year -- give them a strange, old photo and have them write the story of what's going on in the picture.