On Saturday, I moved several years' accumulation of junk, treasures, and memorabilia from an upstairs closet to one that was no different, except that it was downstairs. I don't remember the rationale behind spending a Saturday making numerous trips down fourteen steps, teetering blindly and juggling heavy cardboard boxes that I couldn't see around or over, except that it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

For the most part, 32 square feet of closet stuff was merely relocated from one part of the house to another but there were a few true accomplishments and some sweet discoveries. For instance, a box of Christmas tree ornaments, lost for so long they had been forgotten, were located in the move and are now stored with the rest of the decorations. Hopefully, the consolidation and reorganization of Christmas items will make decorating a bit smoother this year.

Sifting through some of the unmarked storage boxes set me on a sentimental journey.

A foot-long knotty-pine hinged box with tree bark still intact on the lid had been purchased at Stuckey's when I was a small child. We must have been on a road trip although I don't actually remember it. I'll never know why my mother kept the ugly thing, but I keep it around just so I can smell the knotty pine every now and then.

Opening my grandmother's sewing box filled the air with long ago scents of her and her home and allowed me to touch the past. I could tell just from looking at the contents that she never completely recovered from the despair and hardships of raising a family during the Great Depression. Until her death, she continued to carefully remove the thread from old clothing before discarding. Her threads were still there, carefully re-wound on small spools for a re-use that fortunately never came. The end of the Depression brought better times for the family, yet she continued to save thread. Sometimes old habits die hard.

Much of the morning was spent on sorting and labeling three large boxes of photographs. Browsing through faded old Polaroids tugs at my heart strings much more than sorting through the pixeled images on my computer's hard drive. Besides, a crashed hard drive or damaged CD could snuff out several generations in an instant. Even though it's fun to view and share photos on a computer screen, it's also wise to keep hard copies stored in boxes and stacked away in a storage closet, so that someday someone will open them out of curiosity some Saturday morning and get a glimpse of the past and the lump in their throat. That is called nostalgia and it's good for the soul.

The first box, the one on top, turned out to be the Amy box filled with photos of my only grandchild. My son and his wife have taken zillions of photos of their only child and in many of them, Amy is posed proudly next to pictures of herself….as if to say, 'look at me! …see how special I am'.

The largest box was filled with photos spanning six generations of my family. The oldest dated back to my great-grandparents…he, Henry, dressed in his Sunday finest, sitting stiffly in the parlor near a window with flowers etched on its panes, and she, Louisa, slight-framed and fine-boned, standing behind in her tightly laced corset and long dress. One hand rested on his shoulder and the other clutched the handle of a small purse. Neither smiled. His expression clearly said, 'I must look stern and show that I'm in charge here' and hers was that she was there only because it was her Christian duty.

I laughed aloud at the photo of myself, red-haired, about five or six years old, missing several teeth, and standing barefoot on a sidewalk in a small East Tennessee town clad in a most unlikely grass skirt and matching halter top. The hula girl skirt and top had been a gift from an uncle, a homecoming sailor with a sense of humor.

I stared for a long time at a picture of Aunt Mildred, taken at Fall Creek Falls when she and Charlie were newlyweds. The wind was blowing her long dark hair and she was laughing. She celebrated her 89th birthday last week, and the most recent photograph of her shows a white-haired, frail woman, seated in her favorite chair and laboring over with her latest poem on a clipboard. Widowed in 2002, she began writing inspirational poetry at age 83 to ease the pain of losing her life long mate as well as her own slow, painful recovery from a serious accident. Her works have since been published in various 'poetry corners' and church newsletters.

Two thick photo albums were filled mostly with my children, beginning with photos taken in hospital nurseries and of me, looking tired and bleary-eyed with a newborn snuggled in the crook of my arm, and continuing in chronological order through years of school pictures. Not because they were mine, of course, but those kids were cute!

That wobbly stack of boxes chronicled past lives, eras, and changes that evoked many memories, some almost forgotten. The re-wound spools of thread in my grandmother's sewing basket allowed me a sharp glimpse into her life and an era before my time and to hold it all in the palm of my hand.

Not bad for a Saturday morning.

(Copyright 2008 Patricia Paris
Contact: PatriciaParis@gmail.com
Patricia Paris is an author/columnist from East Tennessee.
Member: Tennessee Mountain Writers, Int'l Women Writers Association, Tennessee Writers Alliance, Chattanooga Writers Guild).