mulling

I’m in Winter Park, Florida for the holidays which means I’m spending an inordinate amount of time peeling back emotional and physical layers of my past self. I found Latin textbooks filled with my terrible handwriting trying to make sense of the ancient language that I worked so hard to become good at. I hold in my hands for a bit a deflated soccer ball covered in signatures from teammates from nearly twenty years ago and wonder how they each are doing. I went on a walk with a childhood friend and her husband only to step right over the spot where I had my first kiss with a girl. I go on a run on the exact same path I did countless times growing up and notice how bright and beautiful the neighborhood is compared to Seattle’s dreariness this time of year. I know exactly where each awkward step is on the path and how to perfectly time crossing the road to avoid cars without changing my pace.

As my parents age, their stuff must go so the physical pieces of my youth must be dealt with as well. I’ve waded through my old drawers in my old room, throwing out three bags worth of pure trash and sending the rest I can to Goodwill. I’ve sorted through a set of shelves with my mom and tried to throw away some education related testing in the trash only for my mom to retrieve it wanting to hold onto it a bit longer.

Before Christmas, my mom convinced me to bring some of my childhood books down to a set of little cousins on a quick trip we did to Delray Beach to visit with them and their parents. I grabbed one in particular, My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, for the oldest. Out of all of the books from childhood, that one has always had a magnetic draw to it that only nostalgia can power. I cannot begin to tell you a single plot point but I can tell you truthfully that it was hard to give to my much younger cousin. Somehow, I ended up signing the books and, in doing so, reflecting on all of the folks who had originally given them to me (my grannie, my uncle, my parents, on and on).

Today, I came across my college diploma stashed deep in the closet. I fought hard to graduate a year early from UNC Chapel Hill, our family unable to continue to afford the tuition. It took a collective family financial effort to even get me to the three years I needed. I’m incredibly proud of myself for graduating from there and I still have stress dreams about the 120 credits I needed to graduate early (I barely graduated with 121 credits). I felt very little upon realizing what I was looking at, not even willing to pull it out from its rolled up position. It’s strange how my sentimentality lies more with a cast I wore in 8th grade that all my friends signed than a very expensive piece of paper that supposedly represents my education. Tomorrow, I’ll spend more time mulling over when to release my childhood cast or that deflated signed soccer ball than any textbook or diploma. Side note: do I really need to keep my diploma?

Amidst the items we’re sorting through is a wonderful photo of Connie Guion, a relative of mine who I never met and is long since dead. In middle school, I did a presentation on her without fully recognizing her impact but still proudly telling her story. I’ve recently become the “next in line” in many ways for family history surrounding her and am slowly trying to pull together letters, photos, and more to house an online archive of her legacy for all to benefit from, hosted on WordPress of course. I’m an absolute sucker for family photos and letters. Give me a box of letters from anyone grandparent level and older and I’m in. I’ll take them all. Minimalism be damned–I need to read and absorb these words. I recently read a letter from Connie Guion to my mom’s dad (her nephew) after he had gotten engaged to my Grannie and it completely captivated me from the elaborate cursive to the sentence structure to the way Connie expressed her true excitement for this next phase for him without yet having met his soon to be wife.

It’s fascinating to see what pulls at our respective heartstrings. You learn a lot about yourself and others in the process of pruning and giving away.