Now that Taylor and I are home for the summer, my parents are taking advantage of the fact that I can finally sort through my haphazardly packed boxes, of well, let's just call it "crap" for lack of a more appropriate word. My brother, Mark, can attest to this as he has helped me move every time I've ever moved (except this last leg from Charlotte to Houston). And for the record Mark, I don't begrudge you this one second. I know I owe you more than I could ever repay. Because...
I am horrible at packing.
Especially before I got married and had nice things that I didn't want to find broken when the moving truck delivered us to our newest destination. You see in college, my idea of packing was to secure Mark's help in moving my stuff, throw whatever would fit into any shopping bags I had lying around, leave the rest piled in the living room, and then go out of town before Mark came to load and unload. Needless to say, he has wanted to kill me on numerous occasions. I think this may be part of the reason he moved to Hawaii.
Sorry Mom.
Back to my parent's house... As they culled through cabinets, closets, and the attic, they kept stumbling upon bags and boxes of random stuff of mine that contained items like: a scratched beyond belief Justin Barnard CD (good thing I hung onto that these 6 years), one out of the nine cheerleading uniforms I have saved over the years (no telling where the other eight are), stacks of VHS of movies like "Austin Powers" and "Empire Records", and used kid sized t-shirts I bought for 25 cents a piece at Good Will in College Station. What treasures!
With the likelihood of moving to Scotland in mind, I have been sobered by all of the treasure crap I have collected over the years. However, among the scratched CDs and obsolete videos, I came across an envelope overflowing with random pictures from my childhood and school years and of course, had to stop and look through all of them. You can't throw away professional pictures taken by Olan Mills of you and your brother aged 2 1/2 and 4 months can you? And what do I do with all of the wallet sized senior pictures of my friends that were so eagerly traded after we penned heartfelt personalized notes on the back (ie - "Stay Sweet! I am like going to miss you so much next year. Have a gr8 summer! LYLAS, Your BFF Jill*")? Do you just throw those away?
So what did I do with all of that stuff? Well it's probably not hard to believe that Justin Barnard ended up in the trash, the cheer uniform set aside to eventually be repacked with the others, the VHS sold to the highest bidder in a garage sale, and the t-shirts restored to their rightful place at Good Will. But the pictures got put back in the envelope, packed, neatly this time, in a new box until I come across it in the future in which I am certain I will again be compelled to stop whatever I am doing, sit down, and leaf through them again.
Who knows, maybe some day one of my ancestors will hang that Olan Mills picture on their wall among their other ancestors like the trend seems to be these days. And without this blog maybe all they would know is that long ago she was a teacher and he a boat captain. The moving wars, cliff diving, Heavenly snowboarding, John Grisham trading, Jack Johnson listening, stir fried beef eating, Mexico mission tripping, Ghost playing, Destin vacationing long forgotten.
I am OK with this because someone very wise often reminds me that only two things in life will truly last: God's Word and people. So I don't need to horde my Christian CDs and t-shirts for posterity. The photos however, I'll keep - maybe one of my schoolmates will become president someday. What?! It happened to my mom! We keep trying to talk her into selling her yearbook with Obama's senior picture in it on eBay.
*Disclaimer: This is not my actual high school friend Jill's note on her picture. It's an allusion to what TV commercial...anyone? Bueller?
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