Memories

I have a 5 day weekend this week.

I decided to use some of my time productively by going through the 12 or so boxes that my parents have brought down on their past several visits. They've been sitting along the wall in my living room for months.

When I was growing up, every year my mom would put a cardboard box in the second closet in the middle bedroom, which we used as an office. That closet always smelled like mothballs. In addition to the box, it held the winter coats for most of the year, and at the top my Dad's extensive collection of back issues of Playboy. The trapdoor to get into the crawlspace under the house was under my box.

Mom would label the box with the year and whatever grade I was in, and every week when I bought home my "Tuesday Envelope" with all my work in it, she'd put it all into the box. Some years needed two boxes. As I got older, the box became more like a locker dump once a year, or once a semester, but there was still always a box.

Now my parents are trying to clean out their house, their attic, their barn, and my Mom is passing along my memories to me. I mostly wish that she had just saved a representative sample, but sometimes I am grateful that everything went into the box.

I found a note from my Dad on a post-it. My Dad worked in a factory on rotating shifts. 2 weeks day, 2 weeks evening, 2 weeks night. On evening shift we didn't see him at all. On night shift we only saw him as he was leaving. It was clearly during an evening shift time, and he apologized for being there for something... I've already forgotten the details, but it went into the one box of amalgamated stuff that I'm still going to save, this proof of how difficult it sometimes was to have a Dad that wasn't always there, for both of us.

There are cards for my birthdays from my grandparents who are gone. Saved.

There are notes from my friends. Saved.

There are good tests and bad tests. Some of each: saved. I started sucking in math around 6th grade, and I saved proof.

I saved a bit of homework from 5th grade that was clearly written with my left hand while my right arm was in a cast. From that year I also saved a doodle in which I said I hated myself. Proof that my tendency towards depression has been with me for a very long time.

I saved the printout of the Presidential Physical Fitness challenge results, also from 5th grade. I was 4'8", weighed 70 lbs, and failed the one mile run test, running it is 13 minutes 47 seconds. I saved that one to prove how far I've come.

Mom also brought some boxes of my grandparents' stuff that has been stored out in the shed. I pulled this beat up, scratched up, old, blue tin out of a box, wondering if Mom really thought I wanted this. I opened the tin, and the smell of Granny's house drifted up. It was filled with mostly sewing stuff, so I knew why Mom thought I'd want it. But you know what else I found? Granny's Weight Watcher's card from 1981, the year I was born. Her goal weight was 150 pounds (she was 5'9"), and her weight went up and down like a yoyo. I saved that card as proof that some battles are hereditary.

I still can't run. I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow. I am trying to take this time to become a better swimmer, refocus on my diet, do core and upper body strength work, so that when I can run again, my cardiovascular fitness will not have suffered, and hopefully I can come back even stronger than before. But let's face it: not running is driving me crazy.