The Treasure Troves

I’m home in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. One path has led me down the next and here I am, with a treasure trove of gadgets and photos and old letters. When Arthur woke up at 5:30 a.m., happy as a lark, this morning I decided to wash his diapers. After all, he was using the last clean one. I headed down to the laundry room.

On my way downstairs I remembered I was going to look for my old doll that has a pretty Christmas outfit and cute wooden furniture. I would put her under our Christmas tree at home. To be cute. Well, as way leads on to way I eventually DID find her, but not before I found about 30,000 other little things of mine. I do some purging each time I come home, but I am amazed this time by all the things I still have here. I found, among other things: 3 knives I’d been looking for (a Buck knife, a Swiss Army knife, and a Schrade Old Timer), my bank book from 2 banks ago and age 9, my bank book from my second year out of college (how did I save so much money?! And where did it go?!), jewelry (the tiny doggy in a stocking earrings Darcy gave me when I was nine, with pierced ears (FINALLY) and I squealed loudly, “They’re SOOO Ca-UaTE! THAaaaaanK you Darcy!” … the age my family constantly reminded me I didn’t need to talk so loud), a heart pendant given to my by my 8th grade boyfriend (passed to me in the hallway by one of his friends because it would have been too embarrassing to give it to me in person), some green-hued mineral from Tanzania (still not sure what it is), stromatolites (ancient algal mats) from the Lake Superior region (picked up in high school before I knew what a stromatolite was), letters, letters, letters, photos (boy, we dressed up a lot in high school…it seems a tutu on the head was standard-issue uniform) music for a horn solo I played for solo-and-ensemble, my high school physics notebook. I thought I had purged all the high school notebooks. What a geek.

It’s fun to see these things, but it’s more fun to spend time with my family and friends. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to purge these reminders. In the meantime, Mom is catching up on needed sleep. Paul has begun his car journey back to Colorado. Dad and Matt are out in the woods beside the house hunting/sitting to see if they’ll find some waking deer. Darcy is about half way through a Thanksgiving weekend 30-hour medical school sub-internship shift. And Arthur is back to sound sleep on my hip in his handy Ergo carrier. And I have a pile for the thrift shop, a pile for re-gifting, and a few treasures to take home, and clean diapers.