Thanks for the Memories

by Debra Marshall

My husband and I drove cross-country this year to celebrate Christmas with my parents. We stayed for two weeks and my mom took the opportunity of our visit to get some help clearing out their spare room. When we traveled home the week after New Year's, we had not only a trunkful of presents, but also a half-dozen or so boxes of my childhood possessions.

This past weekend I started the time-consuming task of sorting through all that stuff I'd gathered over the years. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that a large portion of the "treasured mementos" I'd been making my parents hold on to for so long were things I don't remember ever having, let alone wanting to keep for posterity. If I weren't an only child I'd be convinced that my things had gotten mixed up with someone else's. I mean, seriously ... a tattered copy of the Guinness Book of World Records from 1982? So not my style, even back in 1982. It must have been mine, though, unless my mom is playing some sort of bizarre joke.

Mixed in with the inexplicable (one neon-orange tube sock? a dried-out package of tulip bulbs?) were some things I truly was glad to see again. A cassette tape of Prince's "Purple Rain" album took me back to ninth grade and the days when I joined Columbia House for the first time. I would have popped it in and listened to it for old time's sake, if I had anything to pop it into. I wish I'd had the foresight to pack a cassette player into those boxes. I found a handful of knickknacks--little figurines of horses and puppies that I'd kept on my dresser--and a couple of frames holding small canvases with patterns I'd painstakingly cross-stitched. There were old school pictures of me and of my friends and of kids whose names I can't recall. There were a few books that I know were mine, classics I loved but don't think I could bear to read again, like Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller. Best of all, though, were my old diaries.

Although I've let go the habit as an adult, as a child I was a faithful journal-keeper. Every night before I turned out my lights and went to sleep, I would write about the events of my day, in excruciating detail. As a grade schooler, I wrote mostly about the books I was reading, saving my best material for "library day," when I would give an accounting of all the books I had considered, as well as the ones I had actually chosen. I went so far as to sketch the covers of my particular favorites; drawings of horses figured prominently. In my OCD years (otherwise known as junior high), I would list what I'd eaten for every meal, as well as what clothes I'd worn--including wardrobe changes--and how I'd done my hair. I can barely remember writing all those things now, but in retrospect it must have been exhausting keeping track of everything that way. In high school, my writing was a big old helping of angst with angst topping and a generous serving of angst on the side. It's awkward, discomfiting reading, by turns sad and hilarious.

I lost an entire day reading those old notebooks. Through my laughter, tears, and chagrin, I got an in-depth look at the child I had been, through adult eyes. I'd like to say that I gained some profound insights about myself from my early journals, but that would be an exaggeration. I was just a kid, more or less like any other, and I count myself lucky that I didn't have any true worries or dark, troubling secrets. Even the turmoil of my teenage years was on the tame side, featuring mostly unrequited crushes and normal adolescent-girl drama about my looks. I did discover what the deal was with that orange sock, though. But that story's staying between me and my diary.

The Author

Debra Marshall fills her days with depositions and her nights with anything but depositions.