Lucy#1 died in late 2013 and I moved into my current house only a few months later. I was too sad, tired, lazy, and overwhelmed to go through all her things before the move, so I got rid of the “easy” things such as clothes and extra dishes, then packed up the rest to examine and keep or toss as I unpacked at the new house. Then . . . . I didn’t unpack her boxes. It was too hard facing the memories, and the sheer size of the job was too much to contemplate, so I stacked Lucy#1’s boxes up in the back bedroom and avoided them. Then I threw in a few half-unpacked boxes of my own stuff and as the years passed, I would take one thing out of a box to use, then toss it back in or on top of the box instead of finding a place and putting it away. Some of my friends and family have teased me for years about the bedroom full of boxes, and who knows how many times I’ve told one of them that I was going to tackle the boxes “next weekend” or on some holiday long weekend. I’d eliminate one box and then be hot or tired or depressed or just want to knit, and I’d stop working in the room and would never go back except to toss something else into the mess.
A few weeks ago, I needed to watch the local TV channel’s weather update (tornado on the ground! yippie!), and had to move boxes to get to the TV. That was – finally! – the catalyst! The boxes must go! I’ve stuck to my plan this time and there has been progress at last.
It has taken many hours to get most of the room sorted. In my hallway now are four moving boxes of things to be donated and one box of things to keep – but only if I can find a place to put them after I reorganize the closets. There’s also a box of shredding, a box of papers to recycle, and a huge trash bag full of, well, trash. Around the corner there’s a small heap of craft supplies to be organized and put away, next to a large-ish collection of decorative boxes, baskets, and other pretty containers that, in the upcoming closet reorganization (after all the boxes are unpacked), will be either used for storage or given away.
The clearing out so far has been part dead-boring (good grief, how many random freebie notepads can one person hoard, Lucy#1?), part aha-moment (“Hey, I’ve been wondering where this was!”), and part a hoot and a half. I found letters my Florida / summer boyfriend wrote me when I was 17, letters I wrote my parents from college, hilarious letters and cards various friends have sent me through the years, and (best of all) letters my Florida cousins wrote my parents when said cousins were kids. I guess my dad never threw away a letter from Lucy#1 as there were also a ton of letters she wrote him during the three months he was in Morocco before the Two Lucys joined him there. I didn’t read the letters, but I did skim through the Morocco letters looking for names so I could see what the relatives and I were up to.
The Two Lucys lived with Lucy#1’s mother for those three months, in the same town with Lucy#1’s three sisters and their families. Aunt Gladys and Uncle Arthur lived sort of next door to Grandma – on the same block of land with a small citrus grove between the houses. I was not quite two. From reading the paragraphs with my name in them I learned that I was a wise guy, a smart aleck, and as stubborn as a Missouri mule. I loved my cousin Butch and would walk through the grove to his house every chance I got. Lucy#1 would call Aunt Gladys to say I was on my way, then she would watch me until either Aunt Gladys or Butch met me on their side the grove. (You could see the two houses through the trees.) Butch and his sister had an enormous dog named Spook. Spook would come with Butch to meet me, and sometimes his greeting was so enthusiastic that he would knock me down and, as Lucy#1 said, roll me through the grove. I would try to fend Spook off, and would say, “No, ‘Pook!” but he did not listen to me. (I can actually remember having a giant dog running to me, jumping up to place his paws on my shoulders, and knocking me flat on my back on the ground. Imagine my surprise when I saw photos of the dog when I was in my teens and discovered Spook was a cocker spaniel.)
One of my uncles worked at his family’s grocery store. When Lucy#1 would take me into the store, my uncle would tell me I could pick out anything I wanted to eat. I’d always choose a box of Ritz™ crackers.
Lucy#1 said she had to temper her language that summer. She wrote that one day we were going downtown, so she told me to come on into the bedroom and put on a dress. I didn’t want to do it, and stomped down the hall to the bedroom saying, “Sh*t sh*t sh*t sh*t.”
Lucy#1 was concerned that I was so young that I would not recognize my father after not seeing him for three months, so he sent some photos of himself at work, etc. When Lucy#1 showed me the pictures, I took one and carried it around with me. I showed it to everyone, even my infant cousin, proudly telling one and all, “This is my daddy!” (And I know from family stories that I absolutely did recognize him when I saw him in person. The story is that when the Two Lucys arrived in Morocco, as soon as I saw my dad, I wriggled down from Lucy#1’s arms, and ran across the airport yelling, “Daddy!!!”)
Besides the letters, which of course interested me, I’ve found many mementos that are not extra special to me, but clearly meant a lot to Lucy#1. She had an autograph book made for her by a boy she knew in high school; it is made of wood and has a hinged cover, and her name is engraved on the front. I came across the tassel from her high school graduation cap and the graduation program, along with the tiny box of name cards – both her own leftovers and cards from her friends (who wrote notes on the back). She kept the “W” from the year she was on the Westover AFB women’s softball team, photos of her friends in basic training and at Westover, and her Air Force discharge papers. There are mementos of all sorts in those boxes.
Memento comes from a Latin verb that literally means “to remember.” Unpacking Lucy#1’s mementos has helped me remember Lucy#1 and the stories she told about her life.
Here’s a photo of the Two Lucys the summer we spent in Florida. I’m pretty sure this photo was our passport photo.
