Family History in a Box

Since the insanity hit fever pitch I've been tossed into the frey of cleaning out my home. Forced to segregate everything my mother and I owned into one of three categories, I am forever making little decisions and seemingly forever avoiding the big ones. The three categories are as follows: 1) Stuff I Want To Keep, 2) Stuff I Don't Want To Keep, and 3) Stuff I Want To Keep But Can't.

Among the stuff ensnared in category one I have compiled a full 2 boxes worth of various writings, letters, notes, poems, songs, articles, cards, invitations, announcements, and other items involving ink and paper, that have been exchanged over the years between the most important people in my life. Love notes from my father to my mother. Love notes from my grandfather to my grandmother. Articles sent from my grandmother to my father about various things of mutual interest. Poems written by my mother to my father. Poems written by my grandfather to my mother. Letters from my uncle to my mother regarding his college applications. Letters from some guy my mom went to college with who then moved to Paris and continued sending her notes that appear to be harmless but infer some sort of relationship may have taken place.

The most interesting of my discoveries comes in the form of The Nothing Book. The Nothing Book started out once upon a time as just that... a book with nothing in it. The cover of the book asks a simple question, "Wanna make something of it?" Scrawled on my Nothing Book's pages are a chronicle of the first months of my parent's relationship, pre-marriage. Upon its pages I have found notes to one another following momentous occasions such as the first dinner meeting of my mother and her future mother in-law or perhaps more daunting at the time, the evenings on which my mother was introduced to each of my father's children. Between its covers, The Nothing Book hold an extraordinary insight to the love my parents held for one another and furthermore, a roadmap for the early stages of their life-journey together.

Perhaps everyone has one of these. I do not know. I hope not. For the moment it makes me feel as if my parents have left me with something positive. Something I don't have to make a decision about. Something no one could not keep.