Blast from the past

Yesterday I was being productive (shocker), and I decided to clean out the garage. I found 3 medium size boxes and 2 shoe boxes stacked on a table. Thinking they were leftover stuff from Jeff's office move last summer, I made a space for them in the back of the garage (I know...we clean out our garage a lot...obv.)



Turns out that my parents secretly transported them and left them in my garage. They cleaned out my old room a while ago and kept telling me I had boxes at their house. I repeatedly told my mother to just pitch them. I am not sentimental and if I'd gone this long without that stuff then it must not be important.



And yet it still somehow ended up in my garage.



And most of it IS junk. Lots of knick-nacks, a candle I made in 5th grade (ew), some journals (double ew), and random cheese-ball wall hangings ("Friendship is ooey-gooey-barfy stuff..etc etc.). Lily was "helping", and managed to commandeer several little animal figurines, a troll doll, a Minnie mouse teeny tiny doll from when I went to DW in 1983, and a troll doll...which Lily held up and announced, "Look! It's from the Woody movie!" (thank you Toy Story for schooling our children in old toys...)

There were also some gems in there.

--I found old high school English papers, some with angst filled poetry and dramatic fiction short stories. Let me say that I was not a bad writer. Also? Ugh with the teenage drama.

--I found a paper I wrote in college which I thought was lost forever. It holds sentimental value because it was a life history paper...from my birth until my death...and even though I had only been dating Jeff 9 months I couldn't quite write him out of my life permanently. It was my first realization that I had it BAD for this boy. It was also fun to read what I had projected for my life. 2 boys and a girl, named Nathan, Jacob, and Megan(although the first boy was with my first husband...I wasn't ready to marry Jeff right out of college at that point, so I had to have a first husband before he came back into the picture). My little sister Andrea married right out of high school and went on to become an architect. My older sister Kate ended up settling in Phoenix. I live most my life in Ohio until retiring in Atlanta (?) And I die moments before Jeff...side by side in a hospital...both of us victims of a massive flu epidemic in 2058. Nostradamus, I am not. ;)

--I found a folder of writing pieces from 4th grade. Apparently I was seriously traumatized by my parents giving away our dog that year. Seriously...half were about that incident or fictional stories closely paralleling it. I was UPSET. Good news? While I remember being angry about it, I am certainly not scarred by it. Which makes me feel better about disappointing my own children someday :) And then there were a few funny ones about my sister. Lordy...priceless.


Then mixed in with the fun writings were random things like:
--Jeff and my wedding registration folder from Home Place...a store that is now defunct.
--Our pre-cana folder with all our personality tests and guides on praying as a couple
--A folder filled with all my application garbage for California teaching jobs.

The two shoe boxes were fun too. One held college stuff.
--I fell in love with Jeff all over again as I sifted through the many many love letters. Thank God there was no e-mail when we started dating...snail mail is much more...I don't know...emotional. Reading his scrabbled handwriting...ugh...he had it BAD.
--I also fell in love all over again with my college roommates. I realized that I really really miss them. My favorites? A napkin with doodles on it, a momentum from an ill-fated road trip to Niagara falls (we ended up stranded in a diner for HOURS due to a car accident). A Barney birthday card with a note from my friend Katie, "Nobody says 'I can now legally drink alcohol' more than Barney, don't you think?"
--I was most saddened by all the cards from my grandma and my Memere. I don't think I realize how much I miss them. Even though they are still alive, they are mere shadows of the women they once were.

The second box was high school stuff. Including my diploma. Not much else of note, however.


It was fun being thrust back into the "olden" days. I feel like I'm so far away from all of it. I can't believe it was only 15 years ago or so. Mid-life crisis is coming soon...I can feel it!