It’s not just the time of year for decorations and parties — it’s also the season for cleaning. I know I’m not alone in this, and I admit that I do a lot of “throw that in a box/drawer/closet” and then I forget about it. Every few… er… decades, I decide to go through everything and really see if it’s something that still needs to live here.
It usually ends up as a trip down Memory Lane as I sort through everything from old photos to old software. Do I really need Microsoft Student 2006? Nope. I have not just *one* but *two* vintage copies of Oregon Trail, if anyone’s interested. Win98, no less. There’s also any number of pens that I set aside to check and see if they still work, nail polish that probably coagulated during the second Bush administration, and bad poetry that I wrote in high school and afterward.
Yep, I put my weight loss on the top row. 😀
Some things I keep, and will always keep, like the 15-Puzzle that Elmer Deschauer gave me when I was a kid; he was an old man that lived in my neighborhood and many of the neighborhood kids would stop by and chat with him, and listen to his stories. (Times have changed — unfortunately. This is one thing I don’t think we’ll ever get back.) He would give me small gifts to take home, and I still have a few of them, especially the puzzle. My mother has a bud vase he gave me, too. I recently looked up the puzzle and it dates back to the 1930’s.
As I get older, the things I value change with me, and this has also been the case with my own journey toward health. I’ve had to sort through and discard old notions and ideas that didn’t serve me well. Things that stopped working, things I wanted to cling to but weren’t good for me, things that have become long outdated.
Things I thought I’d never discard have ended up in my emotional trash, and I didn’t even realize they were gone. I found a photo that must be at least 30 years old; my husband was dressed up as Santa and I was on his lap. Poor guy. Here I am in my mid-50’s, and I look better, feel better, and weigh substantially less than I did, back then.
This journey amazes me at moments like this — looking back, I left a great deal of myself behind, thinking that was expected of me as an adult — and here I am, decades later, rediscovering and embracing those things I thought were lost forever. My ability to write, my musical roots, camping, getting out and walking, adventuring.
Some things are worth discarding and never revisiting, again. (*ahem* VHS tapes!) And some things? Surprisingly, they never leave us; we just need to nurture them and let them bloom.