The cleaning. The sorting. The piles. The throw-aways. No, I am not talking about laundry. I am talking about all the paper stuff we collect during our lives.
A year and a half ago I had to clean out my work office of 20 years of papers and pictures. I brought them all home in boxes. Some of the boxes are still untouched in the basement.
Today I decided to clean out all my personal files. Actually, if I had not found a fifteen inch pile of old investment documents last month, I probably would not have even started this. Geez. The shredding.
So, there I was deciding what appliances I still owned that I needed to keep information on, and what I could toss. There were birth and death certificates. Letters my sons received for the "Dean's List", art awards, IQ scores, third grade essays. And that was just in one closet. I know there are more boxes in the basement.
At Christmas time, I put together a box of ornaments for my youngest son. I gave him all the ones I purchased for him when he was younger. I happened to open one of those basement boxes and found a cut-out of a woman that he made in first grade, circa 1987. This is his description of me:
My Mother is someone who... is 20 years old, weighs 50 pounds, a good cook, Likes... playing outside in the park, to clean house, Doesn't like... sneaking out cookies, Godzilla.
Well, I guess I was a good cook. How can you throw away something so precious?
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