When we cleaned out my dad's house in 2010, I couldn't throw away any of the pictures, recipes, or letters that my parents had saved. But there were a LOT of them. My parents (especially my dad) saved every greeting card they ever received. They had accumulated 40 years worth of their own pictures as well as hundreds of pictures sent from children and grandchildren who had left the nest. There were graduation announcements, obituary clippings, important documents like marriage licenses and birth certificates, postcards, resumes, and business cards. My parents did amazing things in their lifetime and in their marriage. My dad was formally trained as a chef at the Culinary Arts Institute of America. My mom played a lead role in a production of Show Boat. My dad worked as a general manager of more hotels than any of us can remember. My mom went to Palomar College after I was born and got her degree. And then she went back to school again when I was in high school and got her real estate license. My parents were successful, interesting, social, goal oriented people. They saved most of the evidence of this and even though I tried to weed out a lot of it before we sold their house last November, there was a lot that I couldn't part with.
I am currently the sole owner of some of the memories housed in those boxes. I feel a great responsibility to protect them and to transcribe some of them into meaningful stories for my children and future generations. Sometime in the future I might be able to turn them into something more permanent and tangible than this blog, but for now...I'm starting here. Over the next few weeks and months, as I sift through the things that are left, I plan to post everything I can remember about the things I find. Hope it's as enjoyable for others to read as it will be for me to remember.
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