January 18, 2000 --- 1:23 AM EST

What makes people keep some things and throw away others?

I suppose if I had an attic to store things in I would. But I don't, so I store all my goofy little things in a big 40 gallon Sterlite box in the closet. It's getting full. I have to figure out how to store my stuff now. It used to be just my stuff, but ever since Paul and I got married I've become the guardian of those little dinosaur books he drew when he was six and the notes his high school girlfriend would write him and his photos and birthday cards and things. In a way it's awfully intimate to have all his little movie ticket stubs dancing with my little ticket stubs in our closet! Our kids are going have a good laugh over Daddy's dinosaur drawings and Mommy's grade school report cards!

Paul drew this when he was five or six along with many others.
He bound them into a book by tying yarn in the holes of the binder paper.

We are both pack rats. When we were dating he would keep the movie stubs from movies we saw together in his wallet. Now he just keeps the receipt for our marriage license in there. I keep the rubber frog and kaleidoscope he bought me when we were just getting together in college. He had left them on my dorm bed. The frog is in my car.

There's a bunch of other things in there -- my yearbooks, photos, childhood and adolescent journals. My current journals don't live in the box, but in the nightstand next to the bed. It makes me laugh to read how I used to write in high school:

High School journal excerpt about the time I kissed Shawn (my HS BF) for the first time.

Besides that kind of stuff, there are letters. HOARDS of letters. A lot from my cousin Gloria since the second grade, a whole slew from my high school boyfriend, a mess of e-mail printed out from Joe, Monique, Carlos, Everett, Melanie -- some few, some many, some just dedicated Christmas card senders.

Did Paul ever write to me? Yes and no. Yes, he did write me. No, he never gave them to me. I discovered them in the back of his engineering notebook one day after we'd been living together for a few years and I was cleaning through junk. I ripped them out and saved them. His handwriting is horrid. He started out most of his letters with "Greetings and Salamanders!"

But all this led to me thinking about the first love letter I ever got from anyone. I've had a few that are really stunning, some that made me cry, some that moved me to passion. What woman doesn't lust after a really good letter like that?! How come guys don't write really snazzy letters?! Sure it's great to call, but man, write some letters. They have much more repeatability and they are cheaper!

Every person has their own style, and their own way of writing. Paul's forte is silliness. So all his are general goofiness and use words like "wuffles oo" and speak in third person like "How is Cat doing?" and include goofy little drawings.

Joe wrote very clear and direct, and cut to the chase. His letters sometimes made me cry with joy at their poignancy. They still leave me breathless.

Then there are the first letters. Adolescent romance. Those locker notes after fourth period before lunch that are both dorky and cute. Annoying and endearing. Flailing but sincere. Where the girls write these gushy things and create tidy, origami masterpieces decorated with flowers that male fingers try to open up without ripping and then never manage to fold back up right. Where boys write in scrunchy writing on wrinkled binder paper and wad up so thick it sometimes gets stuck in the locket slats and female digits use pen points to smoosh them on through to get them out to be able to devour those treasured, penciled words:

"Love letter" from Shawn, all wadded up and creased on binder paper.
I found it in my locker one morning my junior year of high school.

Maybe it's just a taste of girlhood that leads me to be keeping all these goofy things. Prom glasses, corsage ribbons, the little sword from the first alcoholic drink I drank, tickets to events, a chunk of the ribbon from the floral arrangements sent to me by three male friends in high school for my 15th birthday, stuffed animal things, the back pocket ripped out of my favorite denim miniskirt before my mom pitched it. Stationary too cool to write in.

I have this Poochie friendship book all my third-grade friends filled in. Does anyone remember Poochie being that pink and white dog with the pink sunglasses? And well over a thousand stickers, now peeling, in my huge honking sticker album. Elementary school passions.

My mom bound all my report cards and tests scores and awards and class photos into this big fat book. I ought to Xerox my high school and college diplomas and stick it on in there to complete that chapter of my life -- academia!

But my favorite one? Of all the things I keep about for all sorts of reasons, which one just kills me every time I look at it? This award certificate from my first grade teacher for learning to make all the letters in the printed alphabet correctly. There are some multicolored robot guys on there and a blue ribbon with white letters flying around:

My stamp of approval:
I knew how to make letters clearly enough to be understood!

Learning to read and learning to write. Bam. Number one thing in my life. How else can I enjoy all the rest so much!?

I remember hating my name "Catherine" because all the other kids had nice short names and I had to go and have this big, long NINE letter name. Jeez! Even that poor kid Richard a few aisles over had it easier. His was only seven, mine was NINE!

I also remember thanking God my last name was only five letters because if I could make it to the "n" in "Catherine" I was more than halfway there. I also wished I'd been named after my paternal grandmother Sara instead of backwards after my mom, Emita Catherine. Why couldn't my last name have been even shorter? Wong like my cousin? Four letters instead of five! Or even shorter -- like Lee? Three letters! And one a repeat! Sara Lee.

No wonder they named the pound cake that. So much faster to write!

A lot of my papers from then got turned in with the name "Cather" because I simply got tired and gave up. When I figured out I was allowed to write "Cathy" I was so relieved! So there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears pored over those huge sheets of paper and fat stubby crayons trying to write my name right and make all the letters perfect and in the lines. I earned that certificate, dammit!

Two years after I got that certificate, I started my journal writing.

I think that's groovy.

~Astrophe

top

about | journal archives | body project | photo gallery | e-mail