Oh man. I pause in my endless shuffling of papers. This overwhelming feeling of nostalgia...I know it well. It washes over me in waves both painful and calming. Bittersweet.
I'm going through my stacks of past proud projects and thick, bent binders; they go back to Grade 1 and span seven years' worth of work. Some of these things, I've forgotten completely. Others, I recognize with just one glance. And then there are some that need time to conjure up old memories, such as this small, blue certificate with the words 'CONGRATULATIONS Scribbles for 50 nights of reading: Dec 14, 1999' written in curly writing on it. It's from Grade 1, my very first certificate for reading 50 nights in a row. There was some sort of ongoing contest in the Grade 1 classes at my school, I think, and I was so happy to have finally achieved this trophy. I think back to those nights I spent reading word by word with my Dad beside me, saying the unfamiliar words aloud, slowly picking up on the pronunciations and spellings and meanings. I remember how, after a while, I got annoyed with my Dad's accent and told him I'd read it all by myself. Maybe I shouldn't have, but he read way too slow for my liking.
I keep flipping through the piles of papers, looking for things I can maybe throw out. Mum's in her throw-everything-away-so-there's-room-for-new-stuff mode and if I don't get rid of some of my things she's going to go nuts. She gets like this about once every couple months, and especially right before summer...she just bulldozes through the house and shakes out EVERYTHING. She even gets to the stuff I hide away, so there's no point in trying to smuggle some long-lost treasure out of her grasp. She'll find it, and if she thinks we don't need it (and especially if I'm not there to wrest it out of her hand) she'll just dump it in the dreaded white plastic bag. Sometimes I even have to rummage through the garbage to find stuff...but usually these bags of garbage are dry, and only contain my own things, so they're not dirty at all. So she goes and puts the kitchen garbage on top of my stuff, so I won't be able to rummage. Those days are really sad.
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This is just something I wrote during Spring Break, when we went to our Gran's place and had to throw out a bunch of stuff because the mice had got into the house. YUCK. We disinfected and vaccuumed and wiped down everything though, so don't worry, it's all clean now. Thank goodness that's over.
Anyway, I just felt like I had to write about that feeling you get when you look at the things that were special to you when you were small, but have forgotten over the years. I hadn't looked at those things for almost a decade (BOY does time fly fast!!), and was overwhelmed by everything that came back to me as soon as I saw them. It was like my mind went "click!" and an onrush of memories came crashing down on my head. You should try it sometime...I think it was a little fun and a little sad, but definitely a pretty good way to spend a rainy day.
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