Memory Collector or Hoarder?

Over the weekend Matt and I went to my Grandma Singer's house to get a bedroom set. Here's a bit of knowledge for those of you that don't know Grandma Singer.

One, I feel sorry for you that you didn't have the opportunity to meet her before she got sick. She was a great woman. Very strong and opinionated and she is the reason that I have the self-confidence that I do today.

Two, she has lived in her house for over 50 years. That's a long time.

In that 50 years, she has aquired stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. And a lot of that stuff is apparently mine. 

So Matt and I started loading up the bedroom set when Aunt Sissy starts dragging out the bags and boxes of treasures from years gone by. We wound up leaving with a bed, two dressers, a night stand and every childhood memory that my Nana hoarded in the 13 years that I lived with her (and quite a few of my sisters). I was kind of annoyed because I didn't really want the stuff. I'm not a "saver" of things like this. I tell my friends not to even bother buying a card because I'm not going to keep it and with the exception of a few really awesome art projects and little things that Tyler has made for me, I don't really save anything like that for my kids. I can't imagine Tyler caring about any of his kindergarten report cards so what's the point? I think the reason for this is because my Nana's house is PACKED full of things like this. So much that it has filled my Pappy's old room and my Aunt Sissy's old room (which is why she was insisting that I come and get my bedroom set, so she could take over the spare room). I like my space and I don't want it jammed full of things that I'm not going to use. 

Well last night after dinner, the kids and I sat down at the table and I started going through everything. We found little construction paper tooths with my name on them that my kindergarten teacher would stick on the closet door everytime one of us lost a tooth, my Little Brown Bear 1987 yearbook (which will make for some wonderful blackmail pictures once I get my scanner hooked up again) and a broken leg from one of my She-Ra horses that Nana found and kept just in case I still had the horse.

There was a pile of every single birthday card that I received on my first birthday and another stack of cards containing two dollar bills that my Great Aunt Elenor gave me every year for Easter, Christmas and my birthday. There was my collection of change purses (the purple hippo, the plastic heart and a few others) that I used every day to carry my lunch money and that have now been passed on to Ashley.

We found Barbie stickers, pretty rocks that I found on nature walks that I would take with Pappy Singer, my watch collection, a letter that I received from Smoky Bear (complete with my Junior Forest Ranger badge) and all the letters that I received from Mrs. Mettler (the elementary school principal when I attended) congratulating me on all of my great report cards. There we name tags, bus passes and birthday party invitations. Anything and everything that you can think of that a girl might accrue in her childhood was in there. And this is only the first box.

After going through all of this stuff that I thought was just junk, I had relived a good bit of my childhood. I couldn't believe that Nana kept ALL OF THIS STUFF and now I was left with the task of sorting through it and getting rid of it. 

I figured I would just pitch most of it but then there were the things that I found that I didn't want to lose, like my Nana Gram's (my Great Great Grandmother that passed when I was seven) obituary and the turn signal switch from the Escort that my dad was driving when he was hit by a drunk driver and almost killed. This stuff was pretty important so the sorting started.

After about an hour of going through everything, separating it into piles and giving away a few things to the 7 and 12 year-old vultures that were circling, I was ready to pitch a lot of the stuff. But then I started to see Nana sitting in her chair and looking at this stuff when I would bring it home. She would look over EVERYTHING and what I thought she got rid of, she had actually kept. How in the hell was I supposed to get rid of it now?

Through the clouds of guilt that were forming over me, an epiphany struck me. I have a computer, I have a scanner and I have piles of papers that I don't have room to keep. I can scan it onto a computer and get rid of it. Hell, I can even have it printed into a book so I can stroll down memory lane any time I like. I can even print one for Nana. Perfect!

So now I'm just waiting to get back into our house so I can start the scanning process and possibly get a book printed before Nana is too far gone to enjoy it. And thanks to my genious husband who suggested scanning the stacks and mounds of Ashley's artwork, we've freed up a significant portion of the area under her bed so we can use it to store other stuff she won't want in a few years. 

I look at my Nana's house that's filled with tons of stuff that she consider's treasures and I wonder if it might have looked different scanners would have been around back when I was a kid. Would she have the piles and bags and boxes of every paper that we ever gave her or would she have a neat little collection of books to document everything great that we ever accomplished? I don't know. But I do know that I can now save all of the memories that she thought were important and get rid of the clutter (with the exception of one turn signal switch).

One of my dreams has always been to write a book of memoirs. It turns out Nana Singer had been writing the first chapter for me all along.