I’ve been sorting.
Four file drawers. A dozen battered, legal file folders—the old kind that tied shut. A couple odd boxes. With an assortment of labels: Mementoes, Training Materials, Favorite Quotations, Keepsakes, Writings. The detritus, maybe the harvest, of 80 years.
I could manage a couple hours at a time. And then needed diversion—a book, dishes, a bit of a movie. Every time I sat down I boarded a time machine that whirled me back and forth from one past moment to a wholly different one. Birth to college. Gettysburg to Montana State Parks. Graduate school to our home on Choteau Street. From Dave to Bob to Chloe to Aunt Ethel to Dottie. I had trouble catching my breath–slowing my heart. My life—my past—went from faded memory to wonderfully, excruciatingly real.
I was determined to be methodical – to keep just some representative selections—not three dozen greeting cards from Dave, but a handful of the ones on which he’d written more than “Love, Dave.” Not all the talk outlines I gave at the NPS training center at the Grand Canyon—just one. But a few minutes into a new batch of material, I’d lose perspective and clarity and followed my gut more than my head.
And then there was this: I found two transcripts—one from college and one from graduate school. Without missing a beat, I set those aside to go into my work application file here at my desk. It took two days before I realized the obvious: that in what remains of my life I’ll never again need transcripts. That being ready for the next position was a thing of the past.
Two trunks remain. But I whittled all those folders and file drawers down to just one bankers’ box and the overflow of a fat folder. As opposed to throwing everything away, I’ve kept enough to troll through the remainder again. Relish the same rollercoaster of emotion and memory at least once more.
Still, I learned a great deal and “lived” or relived so much during this go-round. For instance, that once upon a time, we all wrote hundreds of letters and notes. That were rich in detail and heart. That we reached out to celebrate and thank and commiserate and put our whole selves into finding the best words. That without even opening many cards, I recognized the handwriting: Kay’s, Grandma Sherfy’s, Claire’s, Lon’s, Nick’s, Mother’s, Smoky’s. I stumbled onto a letter or two from cousin Gary—whose high school introduction to W. H. Auden and e.e. cummings gave me a wider, more complex world.
That an astonishing number of people who knew me most through professional work kept in touch personally: Dr. Pfanz, Alan and Nora and Mary Kay and Betty from Gettysburg, Mr. Ulery, Forest Service archaeologists, Dave’s friends, local historical society leaders.
That my travels across the Park Service to meetings and site visits and conferences introduced me to far more of the US than I remembered. And to a host of NPS superintendents and central office staff—acquainted enough to joke, to remember our various foibles even in official correspondence. That my travels across Montana magicked up the same collegial exchanges and the same rich array of fascinating landscapes.
That through all these years, Amanda often drew and wrote her thanks for my presence in her world. From her early horse depictions, to North Fork epistles, to cards decorated by her brood as they mastered crayons and markers.
That I’ve worked with an incredible host of good people who—when I married, faced surgery, or moved to a different job—wrote wise and kind and funny words. Made banners. Cooked casseroles. (We also shared our antipathy to the villains among us!)
I found a cache of mimeographed Gettysburg handouts that the indomitable Colonel Sheads assembled for every new ranger. Too valuable to toss long ago when I never could remember all the soldiers’ rankings. Or army organization: regiment, brigade, division, corps.
I saw that I’ve been drawn to old things all my life. Most of our growing up toys were hand-me-down; few were new. But the ones l treasured are the oldest: a nineteenth-century sewing box, a child’s size sad-iron—for heating on a wood burning stove. A tin tar soap container. The remnants of a small thimble collection—including the tiny one Mother purchased for my 4-year-old fingers as well as older, exotic ones. I’d even saved the rotund Italian chef clock that kept our family’s daily time on Ash Street.
Like the unneeded transcripts, I found it easy to pitch the marked-up outlines of talks and lectures and training exercises. Presentation days are long over. Nor will I ever again need the newsletters that I wrote when the Society’s editor dismissed my request to include historic preservation in the agency’s major publications. Or Heritage Project magazines. Fish, Wildlife, and Parks periodicals. I was flabbergasted by how much I wrote in the course of my work days—letters and reports, annual plans and briefings and grants. And in the evenings, more words for publication, when I joined Dave in a bit of article writing.
I could re-imagine the days that were defined not only by choirs of amazing people, but by webs of words and reasonings and analogies— tinkered with over and over to be more potent.
The cascades of paper proved that I followed in Mother’s footsteps: finding and saving inspirational quotes—a hundred “Points to Ponder” excised from Reader’s Digests. More of my dad’s pocket calendars. Washington Post essays by James Dickey. Construction paper pages on which I’d typed a selection of favorites and then taped to the wall beside my desk. From a fat, full two-inch binder stuffed with wise sayings, cartoons, essays, I spared just a sample. Including a Thoreau quotation that had eluded me for forty years. And I kept Mother’s notebooks of quotations.
I found a cache of cards that I’d forgotten rescuing from McPherson: forty or so congratulatory greetings sent to my folks when I was born. Sweet little lambs, storks, bassinets – and good wishes for Paul and Esther and their second daughter.
I’ve written before about the advice directed to people my age–to sort and discard. To free our children from the burden of stuff. To recognize that no one wants what we saved. To remember that we take nothing with us. Those admonitions are often strident, brisk, matter-of-fact. We—the hoarding elderly—should just get on with it.
Not so fast, I think. Not so glibly. I am—we are—at an age where ruminating and reckoning with our lives IS our work. Not to the exclusion of living—in fact, as we can, living with purpose, savoring friendships and travel and good books. Even in these horrific times—especially because of these times. Still, I believe that this is the time to celebrate and appreciate good fortune when it came our way. To reach peace with the complexities we experienced. And to acknowledge with dispassion what we would live over if we could. The sum of this sorting: that I have lived a life more complex and exotic and enchanted than I ever imagined possible all those years ago in McPherson.
I would not trade my breathless, fraught hours of sorting. I am grateful that I kept some tangible reminders of all the years past. And that I could save a few of those reminders for yet another time-travel journey.
And that Thoreau quotation that I’d “lost.” It still resonates:
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. (©)
