Memories by the boxload

I recently drove from Toronto to Montreal to pick up some items my mother had been collecting over the years. Keepsakes, books and artwork, that since my mother had passed away, I'd asked my father to keep for me in his purge of all her collectables.  He wasn't trying to erase their past, he just wanted to remove the clutter from his 2 bedroom condo. He called it junk and my mother called it memories.

In their 33 years together, they kept all these items he would have gladly given away, but he knew they were important to her, plus she would have killed him if he had tried.  He once sold a box of her old vinyl at a garage sale for $5, which included the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the original Woodstock album.  She never let him live that one down.

I brought many more boxes home than I had expected. While going through them, I pulled out a letter granting my mom a scholarship in 1960.


I found her high school yearbooks, her journals from her travels around Europe. So many memories that I felt were a part of me, that gave me a small window in to her past, before I existed. I loved imagining how proud she must have been to receive that scholarship, that she had kept the letter for over 40 years. The thought made me smile.

Her yearbooks were particularly telling about the era she grew up in. I laughed out loud when I read the blurb on her yearbook "Not a leader of women, but rather a follower of men" And that her best asset was listed as "eyes of blue and a blonde too".  She would have cringed at those words, how ridiculous they now sounded.

She was so much more than her blue eyes and blond hair.  My mother was an intelligent woman and as my Dad would agree, it's more accurate to state that men were a big follower of her.

Times certainly have changed and it's fascinating to see where your parents came from and how that has shaped them. If I didn't have those tangible items to peer through I couldn't get the same feeling of closeness to her past.

I know lugging them around for so many years must have been frustrating, especially for my Dad, but I'm glad she did it.  Because I get a little closer to the woman who raised me, even if it did mean an extra large moving truck.