The Life That Was

Today I went hunting for the old school shoes before I resign myself for the need to battle the malls and buy new school shoes.  With three boys, overpriced school shoes have a way of working down to three pairs of feet.  But by the time Smith gets them, often they're in a very sad state that not even a good lick of shoe polish can revive them.

Our big bags of winter clothes and clothes to be grown into, all live in a ceiling space, which seems to hold all the parts of our lives that don't fit inside our cupboards.  And it was in the hot ceiling surrounded by bags and boxes and small speckles of what looks suspiciously of rat poo, that I saw it.

The big blue box of a life I used to live.

I'm a sucker for memory stuff, I wish I had more of my own, including the person who could tell me the memory stuff.  My boys will have their first every things, their favourite books, an old baby toy - and I hope one day they'll get as much pleasure from looking through their things as I do from the image of them doing that.

My big blue box is a collection of 12 years worth of memories, although I hadn't realised there would be a finite number otherwise I would have collected a few more.  Still, it's nice to know there are photos, letters, even a wedding dress to look back on.  It's of no interest to anyone apart from me.  And no matter how lovely the Husband is, I really can't expect him to get excited about trawling through this memory box.

I'd love to have a chat with the person who features in the photos alongside me.  To have a chuckle at haircuts, clothing choices (always mine, never his), remember old songs, old trips.  To remember listening to Bjork while driving along the empty and heather strewn Scottish Highlands, of coming home to a hot poured bath after busing, then training, then busing and finally walking back to a hospital we lived in in some nothing town of the UK, before doing it all again the next morning.  Of mountain biking together, the king of the mountain, then burning out brakes and the heels of my shoes, too scared to give in to the adrenalin rush, and then releasing the brakes and wondering why it took me long to do it.  Of good times and of not good times, I have an internal catalogue.  And for someone who overshares so freely, this is a chapter of my life that I won't.  Because it's not just my chapter to share.

Still when you go looking for old school shoes, and you see a big blue box of memories, it's nice just to have a sneak look, before closing the lid again.

Do you have memory boxes?  Do you ever look?