The other night I was almost asleep when one of my daughters came in and asked if she could see my old glasses. She knew I had them somewhere, but it had been a few years since any of us had opened the memory chest.
The chest is in my bedroom, so I stayed awake and waited while she dug around, looking for the glasses. I knew she had located them when she burst out laughing. Big, pink, plastic, and big. And she hadn’t even put them on her face yet.
I have a few other pairs as well, all big and plastic and progressively stronger in prescription. “Addy!” Amy called, between snorts of laughter. “Come try on Mom’s old glasses with me.”
I’m not a keeper. I’m really pretty good about throwing out anything I haven’t used for a while or don’t suspect I’ll be using again. But I do have my hope chest, which, in actuality, has always served as a memory chest. In it are old photo albums, letters, cards, 4-H record books from when I was a kid, newspaper clippings, old glasses and mouth impressions and retainers (gross, I know), and my high school yearbooks and letter jacket. There are also things from my girls’ early years–their baptism paraphernalia and journals filled with funny things they said.
Then both girls were in my room and I was awake and reminiscing and laughing and crying for a good hour or more while we all shifted through the contents of the memory chest.
People have been mistaking my daughters for each other for most of their lives. And they’ve been asked hundreds of times if they’re twins. But my old glasses really make them look alike.
Above, Amy is wearing my 8th grade glasses and my high school letter jacket while Addy reads quotes from her Quotable Kid journal.
That last one could have age 17 on it just as easily as age four. Addy could change moods instantly. One day I asked “How can you be so sweet and wonderful one minute and so rude and snotty the next?” Her response? “I like opposites.”
Amy’s Quotable Kid journal holds some real gems, as well.
G.B. sent a letter to Amy in the mail. It said, “I miss you. Frosty is doing fine. The leaves are falling off my trees. I am going to visit you soon.” After I read it to Amy she ran over to Addy and said, “The leaves are falling off G.B.’s trees so she’s going to come to our house.”
Bless my mom for getting me a camera and letting me carry it around with me when I was just six years old and for helping me put an album together. The truck with the camper on it is the truck I drove in high school (minus the camper). My first friend, Ruthie, stuck a Barbie shoe up her nose and almost lost her ability to hear out of one ear. Before moving to Wyoming in first grade, we lived in southern California.
There are several scrapbooks and 4-H record books from my years of showing horses and dogs and other assorted livestock. One of my first horses was Misty (named after Misty of Chincoteague, my favorite girlhood book). Misty was a brat. She often laid down and rolled while I was riding her. Santa brought her to me when I was seven. He booted her out of the sleigh while flying over our ranch and that’s where I found her. I loved her, of course, despite her unruly behavior.
Also in the memory chest is a book that my niece, Christie, wrote and had published. She gave it to me as a gift for Christmas one year. It’s a keeper, for sure.
I’m glad I took the time to save and move (multiple times) and store all of these items. Going through them can really bring into focus, for the girls, who I was as a child and a teenager and what that does for their current image of me and themselves. They also now have a much clearer sense of what they were like when they were little and how much joy they brought (and still bring) to my daily life. And, of course, each time I look at these items, I see more and more of my parents’ effort and love. As I get further along in my parenting career, I see it all in a different light and with even greater appreciation.
Hindsight–all those small artifacts and memories and what they mean as we consider them and reconsider them at different times in our lives–brings us closer and closer to 20/20.
A String of Pearls 