I’ve moved a lot of times in my life, and each time I’ve considered trashing at least some of the bags and boxes of memorabilia I’ve been toting around all my life. I’d like to thank Past Sari for hanging on to all that crap, because it’s proved useful as I’ve been writing my book. It all amounts to a treasure trove of writing prompts, and they are helping me jog my memory and make sense of the past from a new vantage point.
Some of it I was afraid to look at. While I’ve always tended to be nostalgic, even for horrible times in my life, I was afraid some of these things would bring up unresolved pain. Surprise! At 55 I’ve finally reached a point where none of this hurts anymore.
Here, in no particular order, I’ll share just a few of the mementos I’ve been happy to find:
1. Here’s a crayon drawing I did in 1989 (I sure have been doing bad crayon drawings for a long time) of the living room I shared with my first husband in an apartment on the boardwalk in Long Beach, NY. We got married that June, and with some of the money we received as wedding gifts we bought overstuffed couches, country French-inspired blond wood furniture, dhurrie rugs, and dinnerware that reminded us of what ’s Hope and Michael had in their home.