Confessions of a Sentimental Packrat            

My mission for this summer is to clean out our attic. I am a sentimental packrat (translation: I save everything) so this is an extremely difficult task.

Compounding this problem is the fact that we have lived for almost 20 years in a house with a huge, walk-in attic. If you haven't moved in 20 years, you have no real reason to force you to clean out. It is so easy to box stuff up and place it on the shelves in the attic while telling yourself, I will go through this stuff later. This attitude results in boxes full of family pictures; our daughters' school work & art projects; clothes we no longer wear but don't want to give away because we "may wear them again someday" or even worse, "they may come back in style someday;" bedspreads and curtains from room changes that we "may use again someday;" baby clothes and other paraphernalia that we will pass down to our grandchildren, etc.

I come by my packrat tendencies naturally because my mother was a sentimental packrat too. When she and my father finally downsized to a garden home, I became the recipient of boxes and boxes of their stuff, too. "Give it to Dana--as the oldest child, she remembers this stuff and will want to keep it." Then my great aunt and my mother-in-law passed away and our family gave us their stuff too. Remember, we had all that room in our attic.

You see where this is going. Eventually even the largest attic fills up. The more boxes you add, the larger the excuse not to go through them. There are so many boxes now that I had no idea where to start, but finally I realized that I could procrastinate no longer, the attic was about to explode. The time to purge is now.

So far, I have spent two whole days going through hundreds of old letters and cards that I had stuffed in various shoe boxes over the years. My father loved to grab a yellow legal pad and dash off a quick letter to me. He's been gone over 10 years now, and reading letters in his distinctive handwriting is almost like speaking to him again. I can hear his voice through his letters and it fills my heart even as it aches.

The first one I found, in a yellowed envelope with a 10-cent stamp postmarked August 20, 1974, sent to me shortly after I began my freshman year at the University of Alabama, says in part:

Dear Dana,
I have been thinking about you every few minutes all day. With you not here it seems like something is missing all the time. I wonder if I will always feel this way. Let us know everything that happens--when your new roommate gets there, when you get an extra lock on your door, about your classes and your books. Be careful, sweet thing. I love you too much not to worry.
Love,
Daddy

I can tell you one thing, Daddy. With you not here it seems like something is missing all the time too. And I know I will always feel this way.

All of a sudden I'm proud to be a sentimental packrat. Who knows what treasures I may uncover next?