I am not much of a procrastinator unless I want to be. Over the years with six moves since 2009, I have collected a number of various sized ‘totes’ with the historical record of my life. In them are everything from year books, hundreds of photos, valentines from the 5th grade and every paper I wrote while working on my doctorate. That’s just a small representative sample. All of these totes ended up at our house in Arvada over five years ago. I added to the collection when I shut down my office in Greeley. MK, who never has been one to take “I will do it someday” for an answer, finally extracted a promise from me. “Yes, I will go through them all and inventory them before we go to Kentucky in late July”.
Well, this week I had the joy of a great helper, my 19 year old grandson, Mattias. Mind you, I bribed him with a minimum wage salary. We made it through six of the totes, with only four remaining. In many ways it was like opening Christmas packages. I had forgotten about so many of the things that I have been lugging around for five decades. We carefully emptied them and then made the ‘keep’, ‘maybe’ and ‘dispose of’ pile. That in itself was a bit hard… goodbye over 400 pages of doctoral writing. I kept the ‘final project’. The fun part of having Mattias was how thoughtful he was.
In one of the deep dives, I found a four part, in-depth, “Personal Psychological History” that I did in the spring of 1968, for Dr. Ken Sorey’s “Psychology of Personality” class. I dared to read it again. It was a special treat exploring this with a 19 year old, who is exactly the age I was when I wrote it. I was amazed by a couple of things—It was very real and honest and surprisingly well written. Mattias had thoughtful questions and observations. It was beyond an honor to share this experience with him. He now knows a lot about his grandpa, which I suspect is good. My grandpas were gone by the time I hit 19.
Why is it so hard to trash letters that are over 50 years old? I did not even attempt to read them, maybe I never will. I am surprised by the things that I have held onto. If I followed a path that these ‘treasures’ have journeyed, it would look like one of those old “Family Circus” Sunday editions where readers are invited to follow the dash as Billy goes through his day. My life has certainly not gone in a linear fashion.
Now for the treasures I found. No, I did not find my baseball cards that my mom took the Fifth about. Oh well, who needs a 1957 Mickey Mantle, or a Hank Aaron or maybe just a Warren Spahn. But I did find vintage ski area patches that included a mint condition original Aspen patch, and a weathered Vail one. The patch is “very rare”—who knows what that means? What I do know is that my mom carefully removed it from her parka about 50 years ago. I have actually pulled the patches out of the tote and put them in my “special” drawer.
I am NOT a hoarder… just a collector.
Onward and Upward,
Mark
Lyfting Me Up 