Spring Cleaning

For Persian New Year ("Nowrooz") we celebrate the first day of spring.  This involves a thorough house cleaning that one might suspect was invented by tricky parents to get kids to clean their rooms worldwide.  But apparently it really is a thing.  So this year I put aside the laptop and my neverending stack of work and got to it.

My Top 10 Spring Cleaning Finds, 2012:

1) A tee shirt from a "graffiti party" Sigma Kappa sorority bar crawl. What this means is that 72+ sorority women were given white tee shirts and permanent markers, set on a course working their way through a row of college bars, writing on each other all the while.  It was both horrifying and hilarious to read this shirt.  While I am impressed that my friends could still spell at a time like this, I am horrified that I have kept it.  On one piece of cotton there were so many memories that made me laugh out loud, then shudder, then roll the shirt up and squish it back in the box.

2) Letters from summer camp.  I didn't remember who had written to me, but there was the evidence of people who cared about me way more than I've ever given them credit for.  There was also a pretty hilarious letter from my dad on massive GASTROINTESTINAL RADIOLOGY journal stationery.  Clearly that was kept.  The only thing better would be if I could find a stockpile of the blank stationery itself...

3) French camp song list.  Just in case I ever need to sing in French about rowing, I'm all set. Phew.

4) A love letter.  I've been reading For The Love Of Letters by Samara O'Shea and had just read the chapter where she talks about how to write a love letter.  She talks about the variations it can take, and gives examples. I sighed, feeling all sorry for myself as I read a letter Keats had written.  I wanted a love letter! I wanted someone to pour their heart out on the page.  Fast forward one day, and what pops out of the box but a letter in such detail and emotion that I'm floored I forgot it was ever sent to me. It wasn't written on a scroll as I'd hoped and imagined for, but it was in an oversized thank you card and included an insert grading the aspects of what a great tour guide and companion I was on the visit.

Years later I read it with different eyes than the lovesick girl who would have received it then. It was really quite sweet. I kept it.

5) My sister's childhood drawings. Saved those for eBay. (I kid, Susie, I kid! Or do I?...)

6) My own drawings. I liked drawing the Guns n Roses logo. Over and over and over again.  Some people got their edge by drinking Nighttrain or wailing on their guitar. Rebel that I am... I sharpened my pencil.

7) Postcard from my brother, when he was just learning to write, approx 4 yrs old. I heart you was the main messaging.  I miss when he was little and had such an easy time telling me that.

8) Stories upon stories upon stories. I used to love writing fiction and wrote all the time; it just poured out of me.  Somehow after college I stopped writing completely. I blame this on the spirit-thrashing that is the law school experience. I found a script I had begun writing with a friend in high school.  He's no longer with us, and I will keep those yellow papers forever if for that reason only.  And to remind myself that once upon a time I thought it was appropriate to include Soul Asylum as the lead track in our movie.

9) College essays offering clear evidence that I was more intelligent and articulate in my late teens than I am now.
I wondered why I would possibly hand in a medieval English paper called "Let's Talk About Sex" and then remembered a friend and I challenged each another to incorporate totally off the wall phrasing into our boring papers.  "Handsome young buck" was one I threw him.

10) A signed and dated document by my dad regretting a certain Presidential vote. A personal treasure.

The point of spring cleaning is to clear things out, to wipe off the dust, to throw things away.  What I found myself doing was spring cleaning my memories. I pulled them out of the box one by one, dusting them off, holding them up to the light, and putting them right back in the box they had come from.

I can't wait to find all of this all over again.