The MEMORY Boxes

Now that we are deep into the fall season, the varicolored leaves emblazoning the trees and beginning to swirl around underfoot, I am doing some spring cleaning. I know, I know, you are asking yourself, "How can a busy guy like him be working on next year's projects already?" Actually, I'm doing this one 31 months late (give or take).

I am currently working on cleaning out the attic. You know, the room that looks like the final scene in that Indiana Jones movie? You would think that after thirteen moves we would have our portable junk whittled down to a manageable size but we spent thirteen years in the last place and raised our boys there. When we moved here we weren't sure how much room we would have, which junk to hang on to and which to jettison.

And as anyone who has ever moved will tell you, the things that seemed invaluable in the old house (that perfect nik-nak, a piece of furniture, a wall hanging, the kids) sometimes just don't work in the new place. You just can't bear to let it go when you are packing and it never fits in when you are unpacking. But you still have fond memories of it from before. So it goes to the attic. The place where hard decisions are made later.

One of the rules of attic cleaning is that it is not a team effort. I will never have her sentimental feelings for a cracked teapot and she will never understand that the next time I buy a '66 Malibu I am going to need those hubcaps. So we have a division of labor.

We each have our own group of boxes that are verboten for the other to mess with. Everything else is fair game. Among the detritus of our lives are two boxes marked MEMORIES. These would fall into the hyper-verboten category. These boxes are, apparently, so sacred that neither one of us remembers what is in them. They are triple sealed and have the single word "MEMORIES" neatly marked on either end of the box.

I have studied the handwriting and I can't honestly say whether she or I wrote it. The boxes are moderately heavy like they contain papers or photos or books rather than dolls or clothing. And every time I talk about getting rid of the old junk that we no longer need or use, one of us always adds, "except for the MEMORIES boxes."

I have to be honest here. I have no memory of what is in the MEMORY boxes. I don't remember when they first joined our little traveling road show and I don't remember having any experiences that were so memorable that we need two boxes full of stuff to commemorate them.

I never look inside of them for several reasons. (a) I am usually too busy moving other crap around when I come across these boxes to stop and deal with them. (3) They have achieved the coveted hyper-verboten status which means I can never do anything about them, anyway. And (d) I'm afraid to look in case the junk inside is as useless as the junk in all of the other boxes I keep shuffling around.

I'd like to think that we really did make some memories that were so special that they can only be properly honored by sealing them up in boxes never to be seen again. . . . if I could only remember what they were.