The past recaptured. Then disposed of.

December 6th, 2006

I’m still at my mom’s. Tomorrow she’s getting a new hot water heater installed, so this afternoon I thought I’d just go down to the basement and clear a path for the plumber. Here I am three hours later. Everyone in my family collects or has collected things. Between my mom’s costumes and hats, my brother’s cars and planes and trains, and stray antiques left over from my dad–plus twenty years of entropy–it was pretty rough sledding. I hardly made a dent.

But look at this. I unearthed this intact jar of pens and pencils from circa 1984. My mom apparently just packed it up and stuck it in a box when she sold our old house. I remember the jar as clearly as I remember my own hand. I even remember each marker in it. Some are from a cool set of Marvy Markers I got when I was eleven. Others my dad stole from the high school where he taught. There’s also a pair of children’s scissors, and one of the red marking pencils that both my parents used to grade papers.

I kept the stoneware jar and the red pencil and tossed everything else.