#273: Little Boxes

I am finally going to do something with the small cardboard box (original contents: six bottles of wine) filled with retirement memorabilia.  It has been collecting dust on the floor of our study since last June when I returned from my retirement party; I put it down and I haven’t touched it since. 

I wonder why I didn’t immediately store the box in a drawer or closet.  Perhaps I thought I would want to peruse the contents at a later date.  Why else would I keep these souvenirs -- cards, photographs, newspaper clippings, the commemorative album created by my former colleagues and assorted other bits and pieces from my work life -- within such easy reach?

I am reminded of a similarly sized box of my mother‘s things on a shelf in the basement.  I may never throw it away.  Sometimes it is just too hard to accept a new reality and denial seems like the best option.

Or perhaps I am more sentimental than I imagined.  Our basement (which does get tidied from time to time) is an archive of our collective past.  Photographs, toys, favourite clothes, camping gear and other miscellanea are all labelled and put away on shelves.

At some point, I will cull the collection because I don’t really want to bequeath a basement full of boxes—even labelled boxes-- to my children.

But not yet.  

First, I need to tackle the contents of the bottle-box. I will throw out the two coil bound notebooks that kept me organized.  ( Did I really think I would find a use, in retirement, for that list of phone numbers or those reminders about a 2010 volunteer workshop?)  I will keep the “librarian action figure” that adorned my desk, and the other mementos.  And I will move it all into another more suitable, even smaller, container and label it "Nancy's Retirement".

There’s a little spot on a basement shelf right beside the box labelled “Mum’s Stuff”.