In which there’s 28 pounds of history.

My mother and step-father are leaving Wyoming, where they’ve lived for many years, to return to the Pacific Northwest for retirement. This means they’re going through all their shit as they pack.

My mom emailed me to say she’d found a box of my stuff that appeared to have high school annuals, memorabilia, and diaries in it; did I want it now or should she just put it with the moving stuff?

Box? What box? Did I leave a box there, somehow, when I passed through on my way from Iowa to Washington twelve years ago?

I said that, since I had no idea what it was (I got my high school annuals back years ago), it didn’t really matter what she did with it, but if she had time to ship it I guess I’d take it.

She shipped it.

Holy shit:

It’s a box I vaguely remember! My senior annual and scrapbook, sheet music, scripts from when I played Kate in Taming of the Shrew. Concert ticket stubs!

And Jesus, my high school diaries!

I thought I’d left my journals at my dad’s when I moved out, and that he’d gotten rid of them along with the other stuff I’d left when he moved into an RV back in the 90’s. I remember being pissed they were gone, but that was a long time ago now.

Seven volumes of teen writing. Ye gods.

There’s stuff from after high school, too. Choir certificates from junior college, clippings and pictures, even three cassette tapes I have no way of playing. A piece of art from a boyfriend I’d dated. My name tag from when I worked at 7-Eleven. Looks like there might be a photo album in the bottom, too, but I haven’t dug it out yet.

I’ve opened three of the diaries and glanced at single pages; it’s pretty much boring, awful teen girl noise. (One page I opened to said, “My mom turned 39 today!” That’s eleven years younger than I am now.) I have basically no desire to read them, but will probably skim them anyway for shits and giggles.

I have no idea how mom ended up with this box, nor how long she’s had it — they must have moved it to Wyoming with them, and then, what, two or three times since? — without ever bothering to open it. I must have left it with her in the 90’s, because I certainly didn’t have it in Iowa, so I couldn’t have left it on my way back in ’07.

It makes no sense that it’s shown up now, after being gone so long, nor that my mother has had it and moved it multiple times without even realizing it. I’m pretty sure it rematerialized itself, if I’m honest. Probably something evolutionarily interesting in it, somewhere.

I don’t really want or need any of it, as interesting and precious as it may have seemed in my 20’s or 30’s; I may go through it and take pictures of the more interesting stuff (there are a few items from MHCC that I might post on Facebook, and tag the relevant people) and then get rid of it. But wow, talk about a blast from the past, as they used to say!