Call me old-fashioned and just too sentimental, but I see treasure where some people see trash.
My grandma probably kept every postcard that was part of her courtship and early marriage with my grandpa. I'm sixty now and have always enjoyed reading their words and looking at those cute, little postcards.
My grandma passed away almost ten years before I was born, and my grandpa passed away on my first full day of first grade (August 31, 1959).
When grandma was in the hospital, she used to write the sweetest letters home to her husband and kids talking about how good they were to her at the hospital and how wonderful the food was.
Although hospital food is now scrumptious, it certainly wasn't back in 1943, but Grandma liked it. Perhaps, part of why she liked it was that she didn't have to go through everything she had to go through to fix it herself and felt as if she were being pampered.
Aunt Kate (who was around 12 when she got this letter from a family friend and shirttail cousin who had gone off to war) had found out that Roy Acuff had been drafted, and Rufus wrote that Roy was on his ship and that he and the other sailors were about to make him walk the plank.
I have my own sentimental items as well--such as a shower of pictures made for me by a class of students with special needs when they thought their teacher was going to fire me (I was a cadet teacher) for managing to drop and break the wall clock. Two of those students passed on many years ago.
I would rather be able to keep those tangible representations of these and other memories around me than to live in a state of perfect Feng Shui--whatever that's supposed to mean...
Ainsley Jo Phillips
My grandma probably kept every postcard that was part of her courtship and early marriage with my grandpa. I'm sixty now and have always enjoyed reading their words and looking at those cute, little postcards.
My grandma passed away almost ten years before I was born, and my grandpa passed away on my first full day of first grade (August 31, 1959).
When grandma was in the hospital, she used to write the sweetest letters home to her husband and kids talking about how good they were to her at the hospital and how wonderful the food was.
Although hospital food is now scrumptious, it certainly wasn't back in 1943, but Grandma liked it. Perhaps, part of why she liked it was that she didn't have to go through everything she had to go through to fix it herself and felt as if she were being pampered.
Aunt Kate (who was around 12 when she got this letter from a family friend and shirttail cousin who had gone off to war) had found out that Roy Acuff had been drafted, and Rufus wrote that Roy was on his ship and that he and the other sailors were about to make him walk the plank.
I have my own sentimental items as well--such as a shower of pictures made for me by a class of students with special needs when they thought their teacher was going to fire me (I was a cadet teacher) for managing to drop and break the wall clock. Two of those students passed on many years ago.
I would rather be able to keep those tangible representations of these and other memories around me than to live in a state of perfect Feng Shui--whatever that's supposed to mean...
Ainsley Jo Phillips
February 8, 2013
