We’ve been cleaning house. Over the years I have accumulated lots of things. Books, records, articles, magazines, flyers, posters, business cards, notes, scribbles, reminders, todos, schwag, tchotchkes and all sorts of ephemera and on and on. I tell myself, “This is a reminder of something important. It will take you back and remind you of something that you have certainly forgotten.” It always does. Superb memories. It immediately provokes and takes me right back to why I saved it in the first place. Most of it is paper. Paper and more paper. Though, sometimes it is a rock. A plastic ball, a rubber bumper, a coin, a communication, a letter, a reminder.

She allows me to hang on to most of it. Some of it is secretly stashed in unmarked boxes in the attic, some of it out in the open, lots of it organized and most of it unfinished business.