“I am memory’s guest....I hear lost voices speak to me” (Linda Pastan)After more years than I can even remember I’m finally getting around to something that was at the top of my list of projects I intended to tackle when I retired: to go through and organize the contents of all the drawers and chests filled with things that belonged to grandmothers and great- grandmothers and assorted other relatives (many of whom died long before I was born.) Actually I have no choice but try to get organized once and for all now that our dining room has become the holding area for the boxes of stuff we keep bringing back with us as we get ready to sell Denny’s mother’s home. It’s a daunting task because I have yet to finish the boxes we brought back with us a few years ago when we went through the same thing with my folks.
As we were going through my mother-in-law’s house trying to decide what to save and what to include in the auction, my sister-in-law kept asking how many years have to go by before something ceases to have sentimental value. A practical question I suppose. But for someone like me (who has been accused of going a bit overboard when it comes to saving stuff) I think the answer is: for as long as there’s someone to remember why it’s important to hang on to it. Or as long as whatever is being saved is a link to someone who belongs to the “we of me.” That phrase from Carson McCuller’s novel, The Member of the Wedding, has always struck me as a good way to think about the people in our families.
Being part of a “we” adds layers and layers of depth and significance to my life and makes being “me” a lot more interesting. Without the we of me I wouldn’t be the person I am. And my life wouldn’t be as full of the joy that comes with belonging. So I suspect one of the major reasons I hang on to things I simply can’t part with is because they have so much to do with the we of me. They connect me in one way or another to people who matter in my life - those who are still an active part of it as well as those who have been gone a long long time. It’s why I keep the box full of letters Denny wrote to me the year before we were married (which he keeps hoping I’ll eventually burn) along with all sorts of other things that are connected to memories I’ve accumulated in 41 years of being married to him. It’s why I have two big file boxes, one marked Casey and another, Brendan, filled with pictures, drawings, notes, letters, school work, and heaven only knows what else that reminds me of the little boys they once were.
Brendan Day, 3rd grade
Casey Day, 7th grade
And it’s why I’ve been spending the last week going through what we brought back from my mother-in-law’s house and getting into what I had already squirreled away from relatives of my own. And even though some of it once belonged to people I have never met, it's a reminder that these people are all a part of the we of me. Here for example is a little bag I found in the bottom of one of the boxes I unpacked today. Inside was a faded scrap of paper with a note written by Nellie Miller, Denny’s grandma.
Both Grandma Miller and her mother, Augusta Hart Thomas have been gone a long long time, but they are still part of the we of me. Interestingly, I have recently learned to crochet and when I found this little bag I decided not to pack it away but rather to keep it with my own cache of crochet materials. I love the unmistakable sense of being connected to these two women this way. The little blue bag with its tiny beads and faded ribbon will be there each time I pick up my own crocheting – a sweet reminder that I have something in common with Grandma Miller and her mother, Augusta, who both loved to crochet.
And here’s something else. I found it while rummaging through some stuff my mother gave me several years ago.
This is the sleigh blanket my Grandpa Ray Toomsen used to tuck around my mother’s lap and legs after he lifted her into the sleigh on frosty mornings when he’d have to hitch up the horses and drive her along the icy lanes to the one room school house she attended.
Mother told me that the heavy woolen sleigh blanket kept her warm and toasty as she sat bundled inside it, with her feet tucked on the soapstone that had been taken out of the stove and wrapped in newspaper to retain its heat. I like to imagine what those sleigh rides must have been like and to picture my gentle Grandpa, (someone I loved so dearly and still miss), talking quietly to my mother while keeping a watchful eye on the horses as they pulled the sleigh over the snowy fields.
And one more thing (although I could go on and on with this). This little 3”x6” notebook, with First State Bank Wellsburg, Iowa embossed on its cover was originally intended to keep track of financial transactions long before the advent of on-line banking.
I've kept it, along with a packet of letters that date back over one hundred years, in a tattered black leather “pocketbook” that once belonged to my Great-Grandma Martha Tjaden Riekens. But Grandma didn’t use the little book to keep track of her bank account. Instead, frugal woman that she was (and having just come through the depression), she used it as a diary. Having kept journals of my own for the past 40 years, this little diary of Grandma’s is especially precious to me because it proves we share something in common: a need to write down bits and pieces of our lives. 
Grandma’s diary entries, (which record what the weather was like that day, the floors, walls, windows and workwork she washed, the cookies she baked, and the friends who came to call in the forenoon or afternoon or evening for tea) leave me with the impression that her life wasn’t terribly exciting – at least from my perspective. And yet there are about 10 pages at the end of the diary that have been neatly cut out, leaving me to wonder just what exactly had she written and later decided to destroy. It’s a compelling reminder that there’s so much more to the people we love than we’ll ever be able to know. All the more reason, perhaps, to hang on to what we do know – and love – about them.
We’ve all heard it said (usually at funerals) that people live on in the memories of those who are left behind to remember them. Perhaps saving the things that once belonged to people we remember helps keep those people with us for a little while longer – even those who died long before we knew they had even lived. And so I hold the little blue bag Augusta Hart Thomas crocheted so long ago, and I run my hands across the coarse wool of the heavy sleigh blanket my Grandpa Ray once used to keep my mother warm, and I thumb through the pages of my Great-Grandma's little diary and I remember them...these people who will always be a part of the we of me.
My Grandpa Ray Toomsen and my mother, Vivolyn Toomsen Keninger
