Until about 2:30 a.m., I rooted through boxes in the basement, sorting greeting cards, CDs, graduate school paperwork and baby clothes, searching for windows. After a week of Forest doing the same, I figured I could zero in on the Microsoft Windows disk, which we need to repair the dormant (easy to fix.....if you have the windows disk) computer Daniel built when he started college.
Of course I didn’t find windows (although I did find the booklet it came in). Instead, I found myself looking through the windows of the last 25 years or so, trying to evaluate what was worth keeping, what I could release into the grand universe of recycled paper.
It’s an interesting thing to look into our stuff, and from it, try to figure out something about the past and the future. What matters? Who, including and especially my children and me, might benefit from keeping it? Will I ever access whatever is valuable whenever it’s needed? I think of what a friend told me how, when cleaning out her mom’s apartment, so much stuff just went to Goodwill, the trash and recycling. In the end, the little slips of paper with hopeful news, the dress worn for a special occasion and the Pith helmut dissolve from one life into another.
I just hope, despite not finding the windows disk, I can remember to look through the windows to what I’ve lived, and do something of use with all the tokens, talismans and memories stuffed into boxes and plastic tubs in the basement.
Pictures: the windows of the present that I look through most
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