So I just got back in town a couple days ago, after cleaning out a multitude of stuff I had stored at my parents house.
It's amazing the amount of stuff people collect and save, things which may have been meaningful once but which have long since lost their importance.
For example, I found:
-Old college history notes, from several different classes.
-A box of old Star Wars figures. Worthless, essentially, because they were "not in their original package." Because they were TOYS that were intended to be played with- and they were!- as opposed to just collected and sitting on a shelf. But yet, they apparently sat in my closet for over 30 years.
-A couple term papers that I had apparently written in seventh and eighth grade, but that was so long ago I didn't even remember writing them.
-Some old school report cards. Turns out I got a C in physics? That was actually my favorite class! I guess I wasn't as good at physics as I wanted to be.
-A bunch of old legos. Including this one really cool space ship I was proud of building back in the day.
-A box of football cards from the early 1990s. None of them are really worth anything though.
-Some old model ships, old sailing ships, but the masts and rigging were all broken. I have no place to display these old model kits now, or even back then.
- A couple old model airplanes, which used to hang above my bed.
- A bunch of old "Car and Driver" magazines because I liked cars.
- A couple rolls of those old weird looking pennies;you know; the ones that just say "One Cent-United States of America" on the back, like from the 1950s style. My grandma had given me these, and I'd just stashed them. According to those coin guide books, most of them are probably worth about... One Cent.
-Old soccer team photos from when I was like 13 or 14.
-A bunch of old "Metal Forces" magazines because I liked heavy metal music. (I still like some of that old stuff now and again, for example Iron Maiden.)
-Newspaper clippings from the last time the 49ers won the Super Bowl. It's been over 30 years. Maybe they're due, though in all fairness, Lions, Vikings, and Browns fans have been waiting a lot longer than that.
Just, mementos of a life lived long ago. I could not hang on to all of it. In the end, I kept one soccer team photo, some old books, a couple of the music magazines, and the rolls of old pennies, and I gave the football cards to a neighbor kid. The legos will probably be donated, and the old Star Wars action figures will probably end up adorning my cabinets at work, just for laughs and grins. The rest, well, I filled up an entire garbage bag and a recycle bin with stuff I just don't need to save anymore.
Sometimes you just have to learn to let go, and live your life in the present. That was part of this whole trip; letting go. I will not forget the memories of that house though. I spent probably the last night I'll ever spend in my old bedroom. Just alone with the memories: Of running up and down the stairs, laughing, wrestling around with my brother, playing games with the family, sitting around the TV cheering on the 49ers, countless Christmases, Thanksgiving meals with all the extended family and cousins, and endless joy at all of them. The neighbor kids bopping in and out, Dad grumbling and grousing around, Mom making us breakfast before school and nagging at us to get our shoes on. And even in hard times, it was a sanctuary against the turmoil and trouble of the world. I'll always hold on to that.
But being there in the empty house, all alone, was a strange, forlorn and lonely experience. Now I know how Mom must have felt living there alone these past few years, with the laughter and banter of us kids, and of Dad, only an echoing memory. I've already talked about this at length in previous posts, so I won't dwell on it anymore here. But I will say it was refreshing to get back in town, back to the present day, with work, social events, and a fun weekend coming up. Maybe I'll go snowboarding this Sunday. Looks like they got a bunch of new snow. Mom has settled in to her new place, and she suddenly has far more social interaction, at the meals in the common area, than she ever did these last few years living alone. I think this has helped lift her spirits. She seems to be doing okay, so that is good.