What I Found – Second Peek

A warm and smart writer I follow, Kari, keeps her blog called A Grace Full Life stocked with lists, which, if you don’t read her, seems like a shortcut to thinking. I hate those kinds of lists. Hers are amazing, though. Personal and beautiful and inspiring. One of them is just photos, and she calls it What I Kept. I’m not great at keeping up with the blogosphere, but my gist is she hangs on to important things by taking photos of them throughout the month, then she posts just the photos without comment, as a story all their own. It’s moving.

I’m terrible at these lists. I want to go on and on with explanations, as you can tell here by the fact that I haven’t even started on the topic of my list.

I do have lots of photos that I want to get in the blog, pronto. I’ve been very slowly going through the stuff Paul brought me from the house in West Virginia. And by “very slowly,” I mean I’ve been pulling out all the low-hanging fruit, the stuff that doesn’t make me feel overly emotional, and I’ve been leaving the rest in a pile in the house.

I spent yesterday morning at the house by myself trying to make a dent, but, after a couple of hours, all I had accomplished was leaving a disorganized mess, plus making my back feel like I had been crouched in a bin myself for the six years that this stuff has been in Paul’s attic. Neither felt like progress, but I know it is.

I did take photos of some of it though, and maybe I can get away with posting just a little bit about some of those photos. I did that last week when I posted about my My Twilight Zone 28 Hours, with the poem from my dad and my doggie. Let’s see what else I can dig up from my photos, what I found.

I had this t-shirt quilt made for me eons ago, and I remember, when I got it back from the woman I’d commissioned it from, wishing I’d made it myself because I wasn’t as keen on some of the shirts as others, and having them all jumbled up together degraded the value of the awesome ones. Well, that’s what a quilt can be, right? Jumbled up?

I am thrilled to see in this photo that the front and back of a t-shirt made for me in college made the cut into the quilt; my old friend painted a steal your face with a skull and roses inside it on one side and a dancing bear on the other. I wore that shirt until it fell apart, and then I put it in this quilt! Genius, really. So grateful. (I’d take a better picture, but I left the quilt at the house. A phenomenon that is going to plague me more and more.)

My mom’s bridal shower gift, I’m imagining, from all her close high school friends she was in various honor societies with. She loved those friends. I haven’t opened this, yet.

Two boxes of letters, to and from Mom, Kim, and myself. A few to and from Katherine and Finn. All I did was put them in one box, which turned out not to be big enough, then I put the overflow in another box, and now who knows when I’ll sort through them, really. This one stood out though, written by Mom to a friend of hers (I don’t recognize the name) about my birth. My mom’s handwriting is the same here as it was when I was taking care of her.

So many diplomas. Kim had her degrees on a wall in her farmhouse in Virginia, and Dad had his in his office at the house he built that I grew up in. I can reuse some of those frame for my travel photos, yes?

My dad’s paintings from when he was goofing around. I don’t remember him ever painting, but he was always goofing around with pencils, so maybe this was a phase. Paul created that middle framed set of photos for me long ago, Dad up top on Dixie Baby and me below on Steady Eddie.

A terrible time for Mom when she had to finish the house Dad was building when he died. “Not Dream’s End” is some editor’s idea, not my mom’s.

My sister’s notes, neatly, year by year. Inside is her artistic handwriting for her chaotic life.

Her camera, I’m guessing, and lots of accutrements. I don’t know if these are worth learning to use, for me or for Finn, or maybe for Paul, who knows. Right now they sit here.

My makeshift desk in the apartment where I’m starting to accumulate things I’ve found. Jewelry boxes I’ve bought at estate sales for the pieces of jewelry I’ve kept over the years, some Mom’s, some Kim’s some mine from my travels. That painting I was given by a nice girl I met at that very spot in Utah.

There’s also Mom’s lacquer box she used to keep odds and ends in that I’ve always had with me, and a small silk purse I bought at Goodwill when I went thrifting with Finn last. Plus, one paper keepsake of Mont Saint-Michel when I visited my friend Mary Margaret.

Up at the very top of this post: a tiny framed message: Small but Mighty. I imagine Kim gave that to Katherine.

It looks like I’m making up for lost time with the mementos. I got two busy weeks ahead of me, with two medical procedures, our final hail-Mary contractor meeting for the house, and three—glory be, three—invitations for Thanksgiving. This is enough “What I’ve Found” for now.