The stuff we keep

I spent a couple more hours yesterday going through things from the basement. In particular, there was a full banker's box of my papers. It's funny what we keep at different times in our lives and what seems so easy to toss later. Sort of paring down our history as our lives become more interesting.

Here are a few things I kept:

• a certificate stating I had crossed the international date line in 1970. It was given by Japan Air Lines, filled out in my father's hand.
• my high school diploma and various awards.
• my final divorce decree from my first marriage.
• my first journal. It probably has only a few pages written on, but it has a lock and I couldn't read it.
• Some loose class photos.

This was a giant box, full of performance appraisals from my first jobs, salary history, tons of paperwork from my first marriage. Yikes, what bad karma keeping all that stuff. I pared it down to one small stack, shredded some and put the rest in the recycling. Then I moved on to the next one.

One of the worst things about having a basement is that it's always available for storage. We have a horrible habit of putting things in the basement as a halfway point between wanting to keep it and wanting to toss it. Slowly, the basement fills until we are faced with a crisis of some kind or reach a breaking point with the clutter. We've just had a combination of the two and I'm on a mission. If it has no use or meaning to me, it's gone.

That International Date Line certificate has meaning to me now. As my father is nearing the end of his life, I find myself wanting to hold on to things that were his or that he gave to me. I remember that flight to Tokyo well. But I had always believed myself to be five years old on that trip, not six. I remember Dave and I racing up and down the airplane aisle, giggling, looking out windows. It was a 22 hour flight, a long time for a five and six year old to sit still. I remember a spiral staircase led upstairs to a place where people were drinking highballs and such. We went up and down that staircase a hundred times, I imagine. I remember a very large man choking on a breakfast sausage. I don't remember anyone scolding us or telling us not to do something. Sometimes my memory is kind to me.

My parents took kids aged 5, 6, 9 and 14 across the ocean for a month. I would be paralyzed with fear over the planning and execution of such a trip. It's hard to imagine them doing anything of the sort now, in their current condition.

That's why I kept the certificate. In another 10 years, it may go into the recycling bin as well.