Howdy,
Okay, wow.
(A wow first written WOW, but I decided it was most likely WOW to me and only wow to you, thus the compromise of wow.)
I feel like my head is spinning. Like honest loops. Unsettled, as if off a constantly rocking boat or left with the tone-deafening throb found in rock concert residue.
Mine’s not from motion or sound but time.
I just blasted through a decade and a half of dusty memories organized and hidden in file boxes. In stacks. With my younger brother Chris pushing us hard to unburden my parents of the tubs, filing cabinet drawers, and white cardboard-lidded boxes from their space and property, we blitzed it: in quick attack — years later. (Thanks, Chris.)
With his own lingering stuff, younger brother Casey led fearlessly to the 55 gallon discard can, inspiring with words of “everything’s digitalized nowadays anyway” and “Google, baby!”
For me, I say a decade and a half because I’m the oldest Hawes brother and a majority of the papers was college stuff: college and university, undergrad and graduate. Notes and papers pre-dating my first laptop — some even typed on a … typewriter.
Yep, typewriter. Welcome to the Nineties. At least my nineteen nineties.
Other items were greater than a couple of decades. Memories faint and strong. Some startlingly sweet, in the sense of being just so “there.” So surprisingly enjoyable, just for being whatever they are.
Academics. Sports. Rough drafts. Randomness. Certificates. Notes. Scripture memorization. Art. Student ID’s. First jobs. Journalism. John Wooden’s autograph. Written compositions and stories. More randomness. Pictures and photographs.
Photos. Always worth a smile or laugh or at least a second look and long stare. And then maybe a smile or laugh. “Oh, yeah …” and he smiles.
Yet another category, discoveries which could be from slightly less than a decade but still before I was married, which is crazy in its own way.
Reflecting a bit, I imagine you still have to do some things to make memories, lasting ones that is, and it was a neat blessing to retrace some of the steps I’ve covered, but in the digging through boxes to be decluttered and disposed it also feels like the decades themselves make memories — a strong spice in the wonderful aura of the whole experience was the simple passing of time: dates, growth, and change, again, really time, seemed to swing a sledgehammer’s weight of interest and intrigue, maybe worth, though I tried my darnedest not to keep anything and my wife helped me get rid of the rest. In truth, she gets even more credit than that. And I thank her. Really. I’d have buried (said with Canadian accent) myself in stuff a decade and a half old. Most things I hadn’t seen in that long: and that long it would have been before I looked again. Only to not know what to do with it.
In seeking to be free of as much stuff as possible, we did a great job of recycling. Yet I’ve still got a small box to sort. Amazingly small, really, but the next sort will be tough. Part will be a second round — like a writer’s second draft — and the other will be a first full look at memorabilia-type objects I didn’t have the heart to handle today after we buzzed through my college courses like CLEP.
Motion. Sound. Time. Space. Property. I hadn’t intended for this post to take on a quality of physical science or meta- or quantum physics, but I guess it’s just that deep … the sentimental.
Which I suppose is why we so easily play hide and keep.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
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