On Archives: A Box from the Past

They are covered in mould and some of them have been eaten by mice. They’ve been damp, and in some cases most of the words have been washed away. My brother has decided to clean out his basement which was filled to the roof with family items, the detrius of compounding deaths, estates, and house moves over many decades, never dealt with until now. He sent me a box filled with my past.

            Coughing from the dust that rises from some of the items. What shall be kept, what thrown away, what is too damaged to restore, what can be filed and who will ever read any of it? Is there anything left of me that survives from this time? Another time, another land, another communion of saints — and sinners. A letter from the ex, respectfully pointing out the path not taken. One of those weird letters from Angel, the primary school friend who would afterwards be not sane, slowly retreating into her other world. An invitation from a painter to a Truffaut screening. All the badges from the scouting movement. A couple of turquoise crosses set in silver from my mother’s Navajo jewellery collection. And the prize exhibit of all, my baby shoes which had become bookends according to some fashion current at the time my parents had to decide what to do with them.

            Some of the letters have value as literary history, and I send them to the archives at the National Library, where a curator will become involved with them and they may rest in peace. Some are so wrecked they go straight to the bin, and others, such as Angel’s ramblings, too painful for me to revisit: time to let them go. There are cards which are still pretty and can be used as Christmas decorations, and a set of Russian costume cards from the Russian bookshop in San Francisco: I have learned a lot more about asylum seekers since then, but it’s good to be reminded of the waves of refugees who pass through the lands in geological layers, becoming assimilated in their times, making room for new people from new places, or rather new displacements.

            What shall I do with these baby shoes? They’re rather quaint and lovely in their way, like the little baby shoe discovered at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall. Parents do like to cover their children’s feet. Since I’ve had quite a lot to do with children’s books in my time, I decided to let them fulfil their destiny as bookends, keeping the children’s books in my house company.

            So it all rests in the archives, of one kind or another, for awhile, until the changes of this mortal world call for new decisions, new fates, or new moves.

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