Is looking back a bad idea in life? It is such a natural thing to do - part of memory involves looking back. Or is it more the idea of regret that is so harmful to us? We can't change the past... Can regret can keep us from moving on because we're focusing on what lies behind?
I really don't have any answers to these questions, though I do wonder about it. I have been looking back a lot over the past few weeks, as I sort through year books, pictures, letters and souvenirs from trips my parents took. My mother should have been a museum archivist - she kept everything!
I recently even came across a folder of school work I had done in grade 3! Here is one sheet inside:
It looked like math exercises any child could have done - except it had my name on it. The first question does date the assignment though:
Draw a circle using your ink bottle.
My kids wouldn't know what an ink bottle was!
My mother has kept this paper - and others like it - for so many years! As I laughingly showed it to my husband, I had to admit... somewhere in the basement, I have a box of "souvenirs" like that from my children's school years! I also have a few of their toys that I can't seem to part with... and Archie comics... souvenirs of different stages of their lives.
Oh, here it is... I just dug it up! There is a lot more in the box than I remember keeping! There are several boxes of toys in the basement, too.
Why am I keeping this stuff?! I've discovered (by talking to the my kids about these souvenirs of their childhood) that they mean more to me than to them. In fact, they often don't remember the toys - I'm the one who can recall how they enjoyed playing with them.
So maybe it's all right for me to throw away my grade 3 math exercises or my elementary school report cards that my mother has been keeping... They were souvenirs for her, not for me...
But still, I find it hard to cut these little ties with the past.
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