Triger: Treasure?

It’s in the box.

Where on earth did you get that?

I’m sure it’s in here somewhere

Hidden in plain sight

One of the main result from the virus lockdown, is that for the first time in my life, I was retired. I had no organizations to organize for, no plans to plan for, no trips to prepare for, no cars to ensure in running condition,no sports to fan for, no walks to enjoy the countryside. I was stuck, in my own life, in my own environment. For the first time since leaving work, I was without occupation other than with myself. So I did read. I did watch some uninteresting tv and videos (how and why is so much money spent on producing so much dreck that fills our passive viewing) but that soon became more boring than sitting watching the bees fly by.

In the end, I undertook a task that has been hanging over my head, accumulating material and guilt for over 50 years. It is the large box of photos and mementos created by my mother which has followed me since she passed on in 1973. She was a collector of photos and memorabilia of our life. This box was added to but never culled. It has gone from Indiana to NYC to Atlanta to France, detritus of my life piled on top denoting the layers of my geological life time. And it had been shut and in a corner of a closet for 15 years since our move to France.

It was decided (not by me) that the lockdown was a good time to clean out the house of the unnecessary, the taker up of room. I was left with the task of triaging this box as it was my stuff, my life it represented. So up to my private space came the box where it sat for a couple of weeks, threatening me with it’s contents and the work required to resolve what to do with it all. Finally, gaining courage of having to decide what to do with the contents, I set up a sorting table and opened the box. I immediately discovered that my worst fears had come true: how could I dispose of anything, it contained the treasures and history of my life and my family. Who knows what nuggets of meaning might found in its contents.

The upper layers were the more recent captures of moments, vacations, dinners, friends, events, travel, houses, work, people. It was looking at my life in a rear view mirror progressing backwards from before our move to France. The first layers were mostly photos, so many photos of places and times forgotten. I wasted so much film and processing on pictures of pastoral scenes, multiples of mountains and of people long forgotten from my life. So that first part was easy, they flew onto the throwaway pile. Hundreds more thrown away than kept. A mishmash of irrelevant events, not worth saving.

And that idea became ever more to the front. What was worth keeping. I had not opened this box in 15 years at least, who cared what was in it other than me and after me…? Inevitably piles began to form with the vast majority into the throw away sack. Pictures related to family to my sister, to my dearest friends into piles to send back to them but the what to do with those things that were significant to my own life and my generational history. And those began to appear the further I went into the the layers.

My mother was a keeper of all things personal. Her layer ended in 1973 with her death at 46. It was the layer I had left mostly unseen since her passing and it took me back three more generations in the end to photos of relatives born in the 1850s.

First it was a backwards look at my own life, university, high school activities, newspaper clippings and mementos of events in which I participated, family gatherings, photos of the french war brides and their families who were her and our regular companions. There were birthday pics and photos of dinners and picnics with Aunt Maude and Norm. They took me back to my visit to France in 1957 and before that the visit of my grandmother in 1954 and to my visit to France when I was three. The bottom layer was things of my infanthood when she was a new mother at 19 in a strange country.

Then it was before that, war time when my father first met and then married her and before when she was a teenager and then child, dressed in traditional norman costume and my grandparents were the severe parents in charge of the cafe in which she met my father. And then her own grandparents. There were also photos from my father’s childhood and family and the people and events the were regular in my childhood. I relived my life backwards to before I was even born. I had been given a treasure of a life, a connection to my own history and how I got to where I am. What was in that box was the story of one man’s life and where and who he came from. What to do with it all?

The easy first answer was to pass most to my sister. She has daughters and granddaughters, and perhaps, someday, one of them will want to know the history that led to them. Then there are friends, to whom the photo mementos might give a bit of life to them from our interactions. Then there were things from school days, play programs, newspapers, lists. Two thirds of those I went to school with remain in Evansville. They gather regularly. My mom’s collections are of items from 60 years ago. Perhaps, they might find it of interest and I know one who organizes events for that group. They are still their key relationship group.

In the end however, there are those things that involve me alone . Who wants my cub scout scarf, my boy scout compass, my first communion picture, my high school diploma, my fraternity picture, ticket stubs to the World series victory of my Atlanta baseball team,my vacation and friend pictures that documented the life I have led ever since. It is a box of treasures that has value only to me. And when I am gone, it will lose any meaning. But it is a box of treasures that I will reopen as I reach my end. As I fade into memory, these are the only tangible remnants of a life enjoyed.

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Post script: I had intended this essay to be linked to a collage of some of the photos and items contained in that box. However, for some reason only known to programmers, the photos that are perfectly straight up when taken, only paste in sideways in this program. The only one that worked is the following of my parents, taken in 1961 at Jack Dempsey’s restaurant in New York City as my mother was about to embark to France upon the death of her father. She was 34, my father 39. It is a forever memory of them both as they were.