Memorabilia

I’m doing a big clean out, and have been finding lots of things that I still can’t bear to toss. Art projects from the kids, soft, knitted things from B., lots of Christmas cards from years ago. I haven’t figured out what to do with these things.

Organized people say to take a photo, then make an album. But that feels flimsy to me. On the other hand, how can I pack seven popsicle stick brigantines for storage? Or a sweater no one will wear, but which made me cry in the basement? I found some books I had put aside for a friend who moved away, one of them had a clipping in it of a recipe someone (who?) made once. The packrat and the archivist in me are the same!

There are book things, too: I found the old Oakland yearbooks, the strange book about the bohemian grove photos. Lots of jotted notes about the various apartments F. lived in on the lower east side and, later, in Brooklyn. Some pages xeroxed from Barbara Pym’s Oxonian diaries. A photograph of a cat notebook. Mixed with my own photograph of my own cat.

I need to figure out a plan for all of it.