Opening the Time Capsule

[kybearfuzz]

When I was growing up, there was a white foot locker with blue and red trim in my room. I suspect it was originally the foot locker my older brother Ron brought back from the air force, with a fancy paint job by Mom. Inside the foot locker was our family identity of sorts -- family photographs, birth certificates, marriage certificates, newspaper clippings, report cards, letters and postcards. I used to look through it all the time and every time I would find something new. I found my parents' marriage certificate, which was dated AFTER my sister's birth, so I knew they weren't hitched before. Mom tried to blow it off as a mistake of the date on the certificate, but I know better.

When Mom and Dad left the house, the twin put the foot locker in un-air conditioned storage building. When I found out, I raced over to the house to get the locker before the summer heat could destroy the family pictures, cursing my twin all the way for his stupidity. Because of the foot locker's size and weight, I bought a plastic tote and transferred everything to it.

The tote has been in my family room for years. I've slowly been organizing the photos whenever the mood strikes. Today, I decided to clean the tote out. With several accordion folders at the ready, I organized photos, school stuff, news clippings, letters, and even my old, OLD artwork. I probably could have done it in an hour, but nostalgia slows things down. I found a school photo that I don't recall. It has an odd greenish tint. My twin had one too, and I suspect that they had to retake the photos because of the color. Even after years of my repeatedly digging through these things, I'd never seen this photo.

One of the odder things I found was letters between my brother Ron and Mom from when Ron was briefly in the military. I also found letters between my mom and past family members and even an old boyfriend (pre-Dad by the date).

After several hours, I finished organizing things and the tote was empty. I have more organizing to do eventually, but they are in a smaller container and I can put the big tote to other uses. Eventually I plan on scanning everything and burning CD's or USB drives for everyone. It's a large undertaking, so it'll have to be after the holidays.

Comments

[dendren]

I love my various time capsules. I tend to hold on to everything that could be construed as a memory. I have bags of matchbooks, trick phone numbers, birthday cards, old menu's, etc, plus memory boxes that had been my parents from years ago. Thankfully I can get it all in one box. It's pretty fun to look through now and again every few years.